White Moves First
by Far2addicted
Summary: After Neji left Konoha, he expected to never see Shikamaru again, but unfortunately, Shikamaru had other ideas for him. Meanwhile, secrets overflow from many unexpected sources, intertwining into a chess game so large, only one thing is certain: White Moves First. Sequel to Spectral Eyes, but can be read as a standalone title. Main: ShikaNeji, Side: SasuNaru, KisaIta
1. Escape

Here it is: the long-awaited sequel to Spectral Eyes! (Well, maybe long-awaited for me). If anyone hasn't read Spectral Eyes, White Moves First can be read as a standalone title, but some allusions to events that happen during the previous story might stump you.

Also, for anyone who has read Spectral Eyes, I am making a few definitive changes to the background of this AU. The first is that the Hyuga and Uchiha families have a little more interaction than I first implied in Spectral Eyes. The second is that I will officially be changing the kind of ghost the Akatsuki are (i.e., the ghosts of serial killers). The particular group will still be called Akatsuki, but instead of referring to the type of ghost, the ghost of a serial killer, as an "Akatsuki draugr", they will now be referred to as wraiths. I'm sorry for any confusion this causes, but it's something I've wanted to do for a while because Akatsuki the way I've been using it just doesn't work.

Well, that should be it, folks! Happy reading and enjoy the next installment in the Spectral Eyes saga!

Addi out!

* * *

Itachi's heartbeat thundered in his chest as Kisame pulled him down the hallway at a leisurely pace, paying no mind to the intercoms placed at regular intervals on the walls blasting out the warning for a code silver: a suicide attempt. His palm was sweaty in Kisame's grasp, even though the bandage was wrapped securely around it, slicking up his hand as he fought to keep his stride even and his face impassive. Even though the alarm was blaring loudly around them and he heard the footsteps and felt the movement of the air from several people running past him down the hallway, they kept walking calmly, without hurry, but they felt it was more likely to succeed than running pell-mell down the hallway and attracting the attention of everyone they passed. It was a calculated risk, but the plan they'd decided on counted on their deception buying them just enough time to make it out of the psychiatric ward before the doctors discovered Itachi was missing and the ward went on lockdown.

"How close are we?" Itachi asked in a low voice, quiet enough that only Kisame would be able to hear it over the alarms.

"Almost there," Kisame answered in an equally low voice, his hand tightening around Itachi's briefly. "Just a few more steps, and we'll be through the doors of this ward and into the general hospital."

A sharp intake of breath shocked Itachi's lungs with the smell of disinfectant and the sweat it tried to cover up. He was almost out, almost free; it was almost too good to be true. It _was_ too good to be true; it was just too _easy_. Something should have happened by now to make their plan go awry. And if it hadn't yet, it would soon.

Sure enough, Itachi heard Kisame give a quiet curse and abruptly start to tug him in a different direction. "What is it?" Itachi hissed under his breath, feeling his heartbeat skip in trepidation.

"There's too many people; we won't be able to make it through," Kisame hissed back just as quietly, steering him down another hallway. "We'll have to take the side elevator down."

Itachi was about to ask how that would affect their plan as a whole, but stopped himself just in time. Kisame had been born and raised in an environment conducive to activities like this; it would be best for Itachi to just let him think it through himself.

"This is the elevator," Kisame said eventually, which was really only a few seconds later but felt like much longer. He let go of Itachi's hand in order to punch some buttons on the elevator control panel. "We're almost there; just a few more seconds-"

 _There is no way we can be this lucky-_

"Hey! You there! What are you going?"

 _Called it._

His mind racing, Itachi turned around and fixed his nonexistent gaze above the footsteps of their assailant. "What do you want? He asked coldly, silently begging Kisame to follow his lead.

Luckily, the man stopped at the sound of Itachi's voice several paces away, giving Kisame a little more time to catch onto his plan. "Why are you leaving that way?"

"Why do I have to leave at all?" Itachi bluffed, crossing his arms over his chest and pointing his nose in the air. "I don't see why I should have to cut my visit - my _scheduled_ visit - short because some damn alarm goes off for some lunatic I'm not even here to see! The nerve of this hospital, I tell you!"

A heavy hand settled on Itachi's shoulder as he heard the elevator doors sliding open behind them. "Sir, I've already explained this to you," Kisame said reproachfully, and Itachi's heart leapt a little in relief. "Our policy clearly requires that all non-employees be evacuated from the facility during an emergency. You have to leave."

Raising his noise even further into the air, Itachi snapped, "Your employers _will_ be hearing about this!"

"I don't doubt it." Kisame's grip tightened on Itachi's shoulder. "I'm sorry, but could you let us go? I'd like to escort him out, and the front entrance is blocked."

"Why do you have to escort him out?" The voice asked, sounding even more suspicious than before, and Itachi's heart reflexively jumped into his throat.

"Exactly!" He snapped even more forcefully to cover up his nervousness, shaking Kisame's hand off his shoulder. "I don't understand why this monkey feels the need to escort me all the way out of the ward just because I threatened not to leave when he told me to! Unbelieveable! This is an invasion of privacy!"

"Ah." The voice grew smug, satisfied with Itachi's answer. "I see. Carry on."

"What?!" Itachi gasped with mock fury. "I thought you were going to stop him, I thought-"

"Oh, be quiet; I'll see to it that your visit gets rescheduled." Kisame grabbed Itachi's arm and pulled him backwards into the elevator. "Thanks for your assistance."

"No problem."

"Unhand me, you wretch!"

 _SCREECH!_ "CODE BLUE! CODE BLUE! LOCKDOWN THE UNIT! I REPEAT, CODE BLUE! LOCKDOWN THE-"

 _Click._

The elevator doors shut.

Tinney elevator music, a soft jazz version of a song Itachi didn't recognize was playing in the elevator, a stark contrast to the blaring code blue alarm. A strange mixture of nervousness and relief bubbled up in Itachi's chest, forcing an almost hysterical chuckle up though his mouth that mixed with the soft-shoe-like music. Beside him, he heard an answering nervous laugh, and Kisame's hand grasping his arm tightened slightly.

"Holy shit, I can't believe that actually worked."

"You're telling me?" Kisame gave another shaky laugh. "I can't believe you managed to talk us out of that. That was _brilliant._ "

Itachi allowed himself a small moment to bask in the praise. "Thank you. Who was that, anyway?"

"You didn't recognize him?" Kisame's voice was incredulous.

"No." Itachi frowned in annoyance. "I'm _blind_ , remember?"

"Sorry, but I thought you might recognize his voice. That was one of the more high-ranking doctors, the doctor in charge of all patients recognized as stable after coming out of a period deemed as high risk for self harm. Ergo, he as your main doctor."

A bolt of pure fear shot though Itachi, and he felt his legs start to shake. "Wh- what!? How did he not recognize me?"

"Well, you do look very different in the clothes and without your bandage. I'd have a hard time recognizing you myself, if I didn't know it was you. Besides, people see what they expect to see. I doubt he'd ever suspect that the man he used to sedate into unconsciousness could be someone like you are now." Kisame's grip on Itachi's arm loosened slightly, changing position before tightening again, signaling that their floor was close. "Are you ready to run?"

"As I'll ever be."

"Good. We're going straight, then a hard left, down some stairs almost immediately, then out a window. There'll be someone there to catch you."

Itachi was about to nod his agreement when a single word in Kisame's statement caught his attention. "Wait, a window!? We're breaking out through a window!?"

"Did you expect we'd just waltz out through the front door?" _Ding!_ "Don't question it- just run!"

Itachi felt a rush of fresher air on his face as the elevator doors opened, then a harsh tug on his arm as Kisame pulled him forward and they started running. Here, too, an alarm was going off, but it was softer, less grating, simply informing the doctors on this floor that another floor was experiencing an issue. So far, it appeared that the news of their breakout hadn't been passed down to the lower levels yet - perhaps they hadn't yet realized that they'd made it off the floor for the psychiatric ward before the code blue alarm had sounded and the lockdown initiated - but that probably wouldn't last much longer.

"Left!" The sudden order came with a violent yank on Itachi's arm, pulling him to the left and causing him to half-stumble, half-fall down a short set of steps.

"A little more warning might have been nice," he remarked dryly as he righted himself and kept running.

"Sorry." Kisame came to an abrupt stop, causing Itachi to run into him. "And for that, too. Here's our exit."

"A door?" Itachi asked hopefully, but his hopes were dashed by Kisame's next words.

"Window."

"This was not part of the plan I agreed to!"

"Last minute change."

"What floor are we on?"

"The second."

"The second- Kisame, you are not throwing me out a second story window!"

"Oh, yes I am." There was a strange sound, as if Kisame was dragging something heavy across the floor. "If you want to get out of here, I am."

Without warning, Itachi heard a screech and felt a rush of true fresh air, as if something heavy had been lifted off the floor and thrown, then the sound of shattering glass and the blaring of an alarm.

"Kisame!" Itachi shouted to be heard over the alarm, pressing his hands over his ears. "What did you do?!"

"Created an escape route." A note of warning crept into Kisame's voice. "You agreed to this plan, Itachi!"

"That was before I knew it included throwing me out a second story window!"

"Itachi!" Kisame grabbed Itachi's shoulder and gave him a hard shake. "We have less than thirty seconds before security pinpoints our location and comes rushing down that corridor-"

"Because you broke the window!"

"-and unless you want to go back and be placed under even tighter security than before, we jump _now_!" Abruptly, Kisame's voice and hands softened. "Itachi, there's someone outside waiting for us. Don't you trust me?"

The words gave Itachi pause. His trust, both the trust he gave and the trust he received had been put through a grueling process that morning. It wasn't fair that Kisame knew his weak points.

"Of course I trust you," he said quietly, not sure if Kisame could hear him over the alarm but knowing that he could predict his answer anyway.

"You, there! Stop right there!"

The shout echoed down the hallway, galvanizing the pair into action. Kisame, not wasting time waiting for his consent, pushed Itachi toward the shattered window - which, judging by the size of the rush of wind on his face, was a large ceiling-high glass wall - then shoved him out the window and into the open air.

The world seemed to freeze around Itachi. His fingers searched for something, anything to grasp onto, his ears tried and failed to hear anything but the rush of moving air, his senses of taste and smell were useless in gathering any meaningful information about his surroundings - he was, completely and utterly, blind, and truly understanding for the first time in his life how vulnerable that made him. Without his sight and cut off from his other methods of data collection, he was unable to tell anything about his surroundings, from complex things like the nature of the sky above him to the simple fact of how far away he was from the ground. And it terrified him.

For a second longer, Itachi felt like he was suspended in the black expanse of nothing that stretched out indefinitely on all sides of him, then gravity took hold of him and pulled him down, down, down into the maw of darkness. He wanted to scream, but pure, abject terror and the force of rushing air had stopped the function of his lungs. The fall seemed to last for a lifetime, or perhaps an eternity, though Itachi knew it couldn't have been more than a few seconds before he felt the rough sting of a net bite into his flesh and his descent abruptly slowed.

The sunglasses precariously perched on Itachi's nose fell off and skittered out of his limited range of perception, leading to a different and altogether more terrifying sort of panic sending a shot of pure adrenaline into his bloodstream. Curling up on himself, he slammed the heels of his palms over his empty eye sockets as he felt multiple pairs of hands pulling him from the net, terrified that their owners had seen his face and knowing by the hesitating way they touched him that they had. Wincing, he tried to pull himself away from the grasping hands that had helped him up, but was foiled by a set of arms stronger than he was expecting.

"Don't be worried," a voice said startlingly close to his ear, causing Itachi to jump. "Boss Kisame told us what to expect."

 _Boss Kisame?_ It felt strange to hear him referred to as that, but Itachi supposed he should have predicted it; Kisame had agreed to go back to his father's - now his - gang in order to escape the rival gang after him and get Itachi out of the hospital.

Grunts of pain and the sound of a body collapsing to the floor echoes out the window Kisame had just thrown Itachi out of, followed by the sound of a large body leaping from the window and landing solidly next to Itachi.

"How are you?" Kisame asked, laying a hand on Itachi's shoulder. "They caught you alright?"

"Never… Never…" Itachi stuttered, his legs shaking so hard, his knees weakened and collapsed, leaving him to cling weakly to Kisame's frame. "Never do that to me again! I thought… I thought…"

Kisame tightened his grip reassuringly on Itachi's shoulder. "It's okay, Itachi. I'm sorry; I won't do it again. But you're safe now, and that's all that matters."

"I wouldn't go making those kinds of claims just yet," a voice called from several paces away, followed by the cough of an engine starting. "We need to get out of the city first."

Shouting abruptly erupted from the window Itachi and Kisame had just escaped from, and Itachi felt Kisame tense beside him as the sound of sirens began to wail in the distance.

"You're right, and I think that's our cue to leave." Kisame joked tensely, then pushed Itachi towards the purring engine. "Get in the car."

The sound of a car door opening close in front of him made Itachi jump slightly, but the steady pressure of Kisame's hand at the small of his back propelled him forward. He ducked his head instinctively as he entered the car to avoid knocking the top of his skull against the metal frame, his body taking over and performing the task it had performed thousands of times already - before he had lost his eyes - without the aid of his sight.

As soon as he was seated in the car, Itachi heard the door slam shut behind him, then the driver's seat door open quickly and just as quickly close. Two answering slams were heard from the passenger side door and the door across from Itachi's seat, and as soon as the last one shook the frame of the car, the driver slammed the car into drive and took off with a squeal of tires on the pavement before any of them even got the chance to buckle their seatbelts.

Itachi was thrown against the back of his seat by the force of the acceleration before being abruptly jerked forward by a reversal in said acceleration, then thrown backwards again and to the side as the car took a sharp turn. A large, gentle hand Itachi recognized as Kisame's grabbed his shoulder and held him steady while the other fastened his seatbelt, providing him some stability in the wildly jerking car that felt like it was weaving through rush hour traffic at a daring breakneck pace. He didn't realize his hands were shaking until Kisame grasped both of them in his large hands.

"Itachi?"

Itachi didn't respond; he was too busy _experiencing_ the things around him. When they had been escaping, he hadn't had time to just listen and feel the things surrounding him, but now that they were in the car, rocketing away from the horrid hospital, it finally hit Itachi: he was free. He wouldn't ever have to go back to his padded room with the stale air and the bland food and the ever-present egocentric doctors. Instead, he was here, with Kisame, and he was free. He pulled one hand from Kisame's grasp and trailed it down the seat in front of him, feeling the exquisite texture of the rough, patterned leather on his fingertips, bereft of feeling anything except clinical hospital surfaces in years.

"Itachi?" There was a slightly higher note of urgency in Kisame's voice, and Itachi felt the large man grab his face and force him to turn toward him. "Are you… okay?"

Itachi sucked in a deep breath, his throat catching. He reached up and mirrored Kisame's movement, touching the other man on the cheek.

"I… I'm fine," he finally managed to say, his heart beating faster than normal, free from the constraints of the heart rate monitor. "I'm more than fine… Kisame, I'm free! I just… I just…" The breath in his lungs catches again. "It's just… at times like these… I wish I still possessed the ability to cry."


	2. Reunion and Seperation

And another chapter is up! I have decided that the official upload schedule for this story will be Sundays, so stay tuned for next week's chapter!

Addi out!

* * *

When Neji stepped into his house, the first thing he did was stride towards his bedroom and open the door with an excess of force, his gaze settling on the chessboard in the center of the floor. As he had suspected, the setup of the black and white pieces on the board were exactly the same as he had left them, with the exception of a single black pawn, which had been moved forward a single space. His hands clenched into fists for a second, then Neji took a deep breath and unclenched them as he let the air escape his lungs.

He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, striding forward to sit behind the white side of the chessboard. Very deliberately, he picked up one of his knights and moved it past his current line of defense, into the no-man's-land in the center of the board, then settled down to wait, as he had done every day for the past week.

The first day Neji had gotten back to Seattle, he had returned to his apartment to find the familiar chessboard witting in the middle of his bedroom floor, accompanied only by a simple instruction on a sheet of paper: _White Moves First_. So, Neji had made the first move and waited for his opponent to show up so they could play, or perhaps finish another game they'd started. But, to his surprise, the seconds he spent waiting alone at the chessboard quickly stretched into minutes and then almost an hour before he'd stood up angrily, irritated at himself for believing in something impossible, and went to bed, too exhausted from the day's journey and the night's activities to do anything but sleep. When he'd awoken the next morning, he'd blearily gotten up and dressed, accidentally kicking the chessboard on his way and not caring enough to pick it up, and gone to see his uncle and Hinata's father, Hiashi Hyuga, to explain his long leave of absence. He hadn't given the chessboard a though the entire day, but when he came back to his apartment in the evening, he found that the board had been righted and a black pawn had been moved forward to mirror his own pawn. Instantly, Neji's intrigue had been piqued again, and he had sat down in front of the chessboard and made another move, only to have been stood up a second time.

This pattern had continued for the past week, and Neji knew that it would likely continue today, no matter how long he waited beside the chessboard. With a sigh, he stood up and shuffled from his bedroom to the bathroom. A good, warm shower would be just the thing to clear that ghost off his mind and get himself into a better mood.

Unfortunately, the shower didn't help, and half an hour later Neji stood in front of the bathroom mirror wearing a light blue bathrobe and dragging a brush through his long hair, trying to get out the snarls and avoid thinking of the chessboard currently sitting in the middle of his bedroom floor.

 _I'm going to have to get a haircut soon,_ he thought morosely, staring at reflection in the mirror as his brush caught in a snarl. _Or at least get the edges trimmed. I'm starting to get split ends._

With a sigh, Neji brushed through the last snarl in his hair and placed the brush down, then toweled the remaining moisture from his hair went back to his room. Going to his dresser, he found a set of clothes more suited to sleeping in and quickly changed into them, intending to go straight to bed so he could get up early the next morning and get all his work done quickly so he could go to rehearsal for the jazz orchestra. They had another gig they had to play at in a few days, and Neji didn't want to mess up like he had at the last one. No, this time he would be perfect.

Yawning, Neji moved toward his bed, passing by the abandoned chessboard on the floor without giving more than a glance to the arrangement of black and white pieces he had already memorized before turning on the bedside lamp and reaching over to turn off the overhead light-

And abruptly snapped his head back to look at the chessboard as the configuration of pieces hit him.

The new configuration of pieces.

Neji immediately sank down on his knees in front of the chessboard, looking at the inconspicuous bishop, three spaces away from where it had been when Neji had gone in for the shower, and in a direct line to capture the his king. As Neji looked closer, he noticed a small scrap of paper tucked under the bishop. On it was a single word:

 _Check._

An unnamable, unmistakable feeling filled Neji then, the same feeling he felt when he had first entered his room a week ago and seen the chessboard. That damn phantom had been here, in his room, while Neji had been a measly room away! Why hadn't he said anything? Why hadn't he let Neji know he was here? With a shaking hand, he picked up his queen and captured the bishop, bringing himself out of check.

Perhaps he was purposefully coming only when Neji was out of the room. Why, though? What could he stand to gain by keeping his distance? It's not like he had ever tried to keep his distance before.

A thought suddenly struck Neji, and he shot up to his feet. If he was only coming when Neji wasn't in the room, yet had managed to come in such a small window as the time Neji had spent in the shower, he must have some way of observing the room and whether or not Neji was inside it. That meant that he had to be close by, or at least close enough to feel his presence. Neji's heartbeat started pounding a little louder, and he felt a grin creep across his face.

Perhaps he should test out the limits of that observation. That might be a fun game.

Neji stood abruptly, walking out of his room and shutting the door firmly behind him before continuing on to the kitchen, where he poured himself a glass of water. He allowed a few seconds to elapse before he activated his eyes with a quiet whisper.

" _Byakugan."_

Instantly, Neji's vision shifted from the mortal plane to the immortal one, where swirls and eddies of spectral energy fluctuated all around him in a dizzying array of colors, including some invisible to the mortal eye. Careful not to focus his concentration in the bedroom and alert his prey of his observation, Neji allowed his range of senses to expand until he felt a warm, dark aura start to slip into his bedroom. Slowly, so as not to startle the stealthy presence, Neji deactivated his eyes and took a drink from his glass, giving the presence a few more seconds to get further into the room before placing his water on the counter and running back to his bedroom as quickly as he dared. He threw open the door, catching sight of a ghostly figure in a tattered army coat crouching over the chessboard, his hand still resting on top of the piece he'd moved.

The phantom stayed motionless for half a second before he looked up, his gaze catching Neji's and driving the breath from his lungs. They stared at each other in frozen silence for a moment, the phantom's gaze giving nothing away, before he suddenly stiffened and turned to flee, his coat flaring out behind him as he move swiftly to the window. Neji desperately reached out to grab the fluttering end of the coat, but his fingers passed through it as his prey passed out of reach and made it to the window. He paused almost unnoticeably at the window, as if suddenly doubting his decision to disappear, but the moment was gone as soon as it had come, leaving Neji to wonder if he had only imagined it and grasp desperately at the last straw he could think of.

"Wait, Shikamaru!"

He almost expected it not to work, but Shikamaru paused at the window, the broad shoulders of his death's form silently hunched as if in protest. Neji felt his heart give a jump at the sight; unlike Shikamaru's shadows, he didn't have a definitive way to pin the other in place, but he might be able to forge those chains with words instead.

"...You were right."

That drew Shikamaru's interest enough for him to turn around and pierce Neji with that deceptively blank gaze, though his stance still broadcast wariness. "About what?"

Shaking his head, Neji let out a small laugh. "I did want to be the one to walk away." _And I won't let you take that from me now._

Shikamaru's eyes gleamed in mounting interest. "Of course I was right. I spent two weeks doing nothing but trying to figure out what make you tick, Neji. There was no way I'd miss an obvious motive like that."

"Oh, really? Then why did I do it?" Neji smirked ever so slightly. "Be careful not to project this time."

"I won't project," Shikamaru said quietly, looking like he wanted to shift his gaze away from Neji but was unable to find the courage to do so. "Because you wanted to gain - no, regain - control over a situation you'd been floundering in for the better part of two weeks. Because you desperately needed to get a handle on yourself before you came back here. Because there's something here that you're afraid of."

"Excellent deduction." Without breaking eye contact, Neji deliberately leaned down and moved a chess piece forward. "Care to hazard a guess as to what?"

Shikamaru's gaze flicked once, very briefly, down to the chessboard before his eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. He flicked a single finger, and a piece slid across the chessboard. "It's something to do with your family's rules, isn't it."

"Yes… and no." Neji pushed another piece forward without looking away from Shikamaru.

"Then their expectations?" Shikamaru came a little closer, again pushing a piece forward with nothing but his will.

"You're getting warmer."

His head tilted to the side, eyes narrowing even further. "It also concerns you little cousin, doesn't it?"

"Bingo." Neji pushed another piece forward. "I'd like not to get into specifics, though."

Almost as if he wasn't aware of his own motion, Shikamaru glided slightly forward again. "And why not?"

"Well, for one, it would ruin the suspense of the story. Who ever heard of a major plot point being revealed in the second chapter?" Neji glanced down at the board and saw that another black piece had been moved forward, even though Shikamaru had made no obvious movement to change its position, so he followed it with a move of his own. "Besides, it wouldn't be as fun for you if I just told you. I know you want to figure it out."

"Brilliant deflection, Neji." Shikamaru finally stood upright and fully faced Neji, his toes pointing directly to the chessboard. "If I didn't know better, I would almost think you hadn't planned it in advance."

"Perhaps I'm getting better playing your game," Neji challenged, the tempo of his heartbeat ratcheting up a notch. "You'd better watch yourself. Soon I'll be beating you at your own game."

"Hm." For a moment, amusement flashed in Shikamaru's eyes. "Somehow, I doubt it." He leaned down and touched the head of a knight, then swiftly moved it in the traditional L-shaped pattern, capturing the bishop on the ending square. "Checkmate."

"Geeze." Neji shook his head slightly in disbelief. "I guess that last win really was just a fluke."

"I think you mean, 'that one win', considering it was only once that you actually beat me." Shikamaru stood up, bringing himself nose to nose with Neji. His dark eyes gleamed in the wan light of the single lamp.

Neji felt his throat dry and his heartbeat pound in anticipation, and he swallowed reflexively, leaning a little over the chessboard. "Not unless I change the rules on you."

A smile stole softly across Shikamaru's face. "What rules?"

Neji barely had time to draw in a surprised breath, his eyes widening in shock, before Shikamaru leaned over the board and seized the back of his head, closing the distance between them until it was nonexistent. Neji felt, rather than saw, the small shadow that escaped from Shikamaru's grasp and and spread across both their bodies from the points of their contact, initiating a blazing trail of heat as it went. The fabric of Shikamaru's army coat was rough and worn, tattered from both action and long periods of inaction, and Neji found himself desperately clutching its folds as if they were a lifeline.

"What, not going to push me away this time?" Shikamaru murmured gently after pulling back slightly, resting his forehead against Neji's brow.

"I'm past that," Neji breathed back, his hand resting on Shikamaru's shoulder and his thumb exploring the divit between his neck and collarbone. "I've had the past week to work my head around it, remember?"

"Excellent, because I'd hate to have to go through that fiasco again. Way too troublesome."

A small smirk decorating his face, Shikamaru leaned back in and kissed Neji again, his grip at the back of Neji's head firm enough to keep them pressed together but loose enough that Neji could have pulled away if he'd wanted. Their bodies from the shoulder down didn't touch because of the chessboard between their feet that neither one of them appeared willing to cross, but Neji felt guiltily glad for the forced separation. He wanted some control over the situation so he wouldn't forget something important again.

This time when they pulled apart, it was Neji who pressed his forehead against Shikamaru's. Outside that room, there was a world he had to face, but inside, there was an entirely different world with different rules- rules he was aching to learn by heart.

Shikamaru was here, and he wasn't going to leave; Neji wouldn't let him leave. But now that he was here, Neji had some questions he wanted answered.

Taking a deep breath, Neji placed one hand on Shikamaru's chest and pushed him back, purposefully putting distance between them. "Shikamaru, you have a lot of explaining to do."

Sasuke collapsed on his bed with a silly grin on his face, happier than he'd been in -well, almost a decade. He felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his conscious, a weight in the shape of the grudge he'd held against his brother since the incident when he'd been eight years old. His grip tightened on his phone in his hand, and for a moment he was almost tempted to call someone and tell them the good news - Neji, maybe, or Sakura. He just couldn't believe how _easy_ it had been once he'd made up his mind to do it. Sure, seeing Itachi again had been hard at first, but the amazing feeling of love and brotherhood he'd gotten when his brother had kissed his forehead had more than made up for all the years of separation, when Itachi had been kept under lock and key in the psychiatric division of their father's hospital and Sasuke had never bothered - or even felt the desire - to go visit him. His only regret was that he hadn't done it sooner.

A few rooms over, Sasuke heard the phone ring and noticed his father picking it up, but otherwise paid the ensuing discussion little mind. He was in too good a mood to let his father spoil it. With a contented sigh, he rolled onto his side and hugged a pillow to his stomach. Today was an awesome day, and nothing could change that. He'd been waiting far too long.

"WHAT?! WHAT DO YOU MEAN, HE'S GONE? YOU IMBECILES! WHAT DO YOU THINK I'M PAYING YOU FOR?!"

Sighing, Sasuke rolled over onto his other side, putting his back to the door, and tried to focus on his memories of the afternoon instead of the ruckus in the next room. He'd been forced to leave earlier than he'd have liked too because he had scheduled a meeting with his advisor that he couldn't miss, but one of the last things he'd said to Itachi before he left had been a promise to come back the next day and see him again. Now that they'd reconnected, Sasuke promised himself that he would try and visit his brother as often as he could; every day, if possible. The giddy smile crept back onto his face, and Sasuke sighed contentedly and pulled his pillow closer to his body. He couldn't wait to go back and see his brother again. He'd noticed a chessboard with a half-completed game sitting on a table in the room, most likely between Itachi and that nurse that had been with him; perhaps Sasuke could coax him into a game as well, though maybe not one as intensive as chess. This summer had given him mixed feelings about that particular game.

Maybe… Checkers? Connect 4?

Sasuke's thoughts were cut off by his bedroom door exploding inward, allowing the fiercest aura of anger Sasuke had ever felt from his father into the room. He barely had time to leap off the bed and turn to face his father before Fugaku Uchiha was in his face, his collar grasped so tightly, it almost cut off his breath.

"Where is he?!"

"Get… off… me!" Sasuke gave a heave and threw off his father, then stared at him in horror. He sprawled on the floor, but quickly stood up again, his chest heaving in exertion from his emotions. He'd never seen Fugaku like this before, not even the night eight years ago when Itachi's mind had snapped and he'd attacked Sasuke. "What is your problem?"

"I know you know where he is!" Fugaku almost screeched, his finger pointing accusingly at Sasuke. "Why else would you have asked to see him? Now, after all this time? Tell me where he is?"

"WHO?!" Sasuke roared right back, his father's hot anger sparking his own. "Don't play the damn pronoun game with me! What is going on?"

"Don't pretend like you don't know!" Fugaku grabbed Sasuke's shirt by the shoulders and lifted him several inches off the floor. Sasuke would have been impressed by his aging father's strength if he hadn't been too full of conflicting anger and confusion. "Itachi escaped the hospital today, and I know you know where he is!"

The world around Sasuke suddenly went white - not visually, but auditorily. Fugaku's face swam in his vision, his mouth still moving furiously, but all Sasuke could hear was a quiet white buzz. His ears only started working again when his numb lips forced themselves to form a coherent thought, barely picking up his own words.

"Itachi… Itachi's gone?"

"That's what I said!" Fugaku roared impatiently, letting go of Sasuke's collar and letting his numb form slump to the ground, only kept from becoming completely horizontal by the wall at his back. "You were the last person to see him today, which means you must be the person who helped him escape! Now, tell me: WHERE IS HE?!"

But the second part of Fugaku's words were lost before they found Sasuke's ears, leaving him with only the realization that his brother was gone and the feeling of betrayal that realization caused. Looking back at his memories of the previous afternoon, Sasuke suddenly found new meaning in tiny details he'd noticed but dismissed: the almost imperceptible catch in Itachi's voice when he had asked to "look at" Sasuke, the grimace on his face that had disappeared as soon as it had appeared, leaving Sasuke to wonder if he'd imagined it, when he'd asked if he could visit again the next day, the nurse's suspicious attitude, bordering on nervous. All the signs had been there; why hadn't Sasuke realized it before?

Suddenly, Fugaku's face melted and ran in front of Sasuke, and he blinked in surprise, reaching a hand up to touch his cheek and discovering that it was wet.

 _I'm… crying?_

A choked sob made its way up through Sasuke's throat, and he covered his mouth, partly in surprise and partly to keep any further sobs from escaping. Tears fell, thick and fast, down his cheeks and onto his shirt collar, dampening it, but he didn't even try to wipe them away.

 _Why… Why? Why did you leave me? Didn't you say you missed me? Didn't you say you_ loved _me? Why did you go?_

"Well, either you're a very skilled actor, or you don't know where he is… either…" Fugaku's voice broke off as well as he fell to his knees in front of Sasuke and pulled him into a hug. At first, Sasuke was frozen, unsure what to do, but when he felt the dampness of his father's tears against his neck, he hugged him back.

"Sasuke…" Fugaku sobbed. "He's gone… my baby boy is gone…"

"I know," Sasuke whispered back, awkwardly patting circles on his father's back that he couldn't see because his eyes were still filled with tears. "I… I miss him too."

They sat in companionable misery for awhile, the only sound in the room the echo of their rough breathing. After several minutes had passed, Fugaku suddenly pulled back from Sasuke and stood up, turning away so his son couldn't see his tearstained face.

"I have to…" he said gruffly, then trailed off. "Good night, Sasuke. Sorry about… earlier."

He left before Sasuke had a chance to answer. He sat still against the wall for a few more seconds before angrily swiping a hand across his eyes and staggering to his feet. He had too many emotions swirling inside him to make sense of any of them. He needed to talk to someone, and not his father. His searching hands found his phone, and he was scrolling through his contacts before he realized through he was doing.


	3. A Single Chess Piece

Chapter 3!

I'm sorry I couldn't get to the two reviewers from the first chapter last update, but I want to thank you now! It's a really great feeling knowing that people were waiting just as much as me, **Rex Senem**. And ShikaNeji is one of my favorite pairings too, **Falainakorna,** even though I started with SasuNaru, so I'm super glad that you like the shift!

Thanks so much for reading, everyone! Addi out!

* * *

Shikamaru was here, and he wasn't going to leave; Neji wouldn't let him leave. But now that he was here, Neji had some questions he wanted answered.

Neji took a deep breath, placing one hand on Shikamaru's chest and pushing him back, purposefully putting distance between them. "Shikamaru, you have a lot of explaining to do."

Shikamaru's gaze was unreadable. "Do I?"

"Of course you do!" Neji seized the tattered collar Shikamaru's army coat, shocking the phantom. "First off, why the hell have you been skulking around for a week and never bothered to show yourself?"

Shikamaru blinked once in surprise. "...That's what you want to know? Not how I found you, not how I'm physically here, not why I followed you across the entire country, but why I haven't been in your face for the past week?"

"I'm a smart man, Shikamaru," Neji snapped back. "I can figure a lot of these things out on my own, and if I can't, I at least know what things are most important. And right now, the most important thing to ask is why you've been teasing me with this game, but never delivering!"

"Delivering?" An amused note crept into Shikamaru's voice. "On what?"

In lieu of a response, Neji pulled Shikamaru forward by his collar with narrowed eyes, meeting him halfway over the chessboard again. When he let go and Shikamaru pulled away, the phantom was grinning.

"Point taken. Why are you so collected, though?" He added curiously. "This is a far cry from the person who threw a mug of tea at my face."

"I've had plenty of time to think about things over the past week." Neji reached up and placed a hand on Shikamaru's chest again, pushing him back, but this time he followed the phantom, stepping over the chessboard. "And I've come to the conclusion that there are relatively few things I've found in this life that make me happy, so I'm not about to let one of those things go." His hand curled into a fist in Shikamaru's collar. "So, your turn now: what game have you been playing this past week?"

His face softening, Shikamaru reached up to trail a finger down Neji's cheek, then pulled away the hand at his collar and gently threaded their fingers together. "Proving a point."

"Excuse me?"

The focus of Shikamaru's gaze shifted from Neji's face to somewhere far away. "...You don't care about me. You just need someone to strive against…"

Neji jumped at the echo of the words he had spoken in that clearing a week ago, coming from Shikamaru's mouth instead of his own. "I really said that, didn't I? I'm sorry-"

"You don't need to be." Shikamaru leaned closer. "It was probably true at the time when you said it. My point is, I've proven it false now."

A frown creased the skin between Neji's eyebrows. "But ghosts, even phantoms, can't change their fundamental personalities; they're static creatures. The only ghost-"

"Shhhh…" Shikamaru placed a finger over Neji's open mouth. "Let's leave that particular can of worms to open on another day."

"But-"

"Didn't I tell you to shush?" Shikamaru leaned forward and silenced Neji with something far more efficient than a finger, effectively blocking all sound from escaping his mouth, instead getting stuck in his throat. A sudden memory flashed in front of Neji's vision as he felt his eyelids close automatically and his arms come up to trap Shikamaru closer to his body.

 _With a sudden fervor, Shikamaru slammed Neji back against the tree with enough force to make him gasp into their conjoined mouths, asserting his dominance over the boy. But Neji was having none of that and pushed back almost violently against the phantom, knocking him off his feet and sending him tumbling to the ground, but Neji wasn't far behind him, following him down in an awkward tangle of limbs. Their mouths rested an inch away from each other's as their eyes connected, a smug confidence radiating out from Neji's eyes into Shikamaru's slightly but pleasantly surprised gaze before he kissed the phantom again, but gentler this time._

 _Shikamaru seemed to allow the new pace for a few seconds before retaking control of the kiss and Neji. For a few moments, he dominated the kiss from below, making Neji come to him, before he flipped the two of them over, reversing their positions. With the better leverage of his new position, Shikamaru was able to completely dominate Neji, keeping him pinned to the ground even when he made a valiant effort to reverse their positions once more._

 _Yeah, that's right,_ Neji thought a little numbly, his physical body too occupied with something else to fully focus on the thought. _He pushed me down, took control of me… but he's not doing that now._

Another memory took that one's place, a shorter but more painful memory.

 _Almost gleefully, Shikamaru resumed his attack on Neji's mouth, kissing him with more force and keeping him pinned against the ground with the weight of his now completely corporeal body. Neji could feel the dampness of the waterlogged moss soaking through his clothes and making him uncomfortable, but that wasn't the only thing that was getting damp. Suddenly, there was a dampness on Neji's face that didn't come from the moss, and he stopped moving. Clearly confused, Shikamaru pulled back to look at Neji's expression, but as soon he broke the kiss, Neji turned his head to the side, hiding his eyes but not the tears trailing down his cheeks._

" _See? I was right," he whispered quietly, his voice catching. "You don't need me. You just need someone to strive against."_

After that, Shikamaru had jumped back as if Neji had burned him, which he likely had. The action had only served to prove Neji right - in his own mind, at least - though, so he hadn't thought about it since. But now, as Neji felt the shadows around them start to grow again, unencumbered by the need for space between their bodies now that their feet weren't separated by the chessboard, he sensed the desperation in Shikamaru's actions, the plea not to push him away - because he would try his damndest not to push back. The realization touched Neji; Shikamaru really had tried to change himself from the conversation they'd had. He doubted if the phantom had ever done so much for any other person before.

And that's when Neji realized that they were no longer playing a game.

His first impulse was to freeze, but he shook the impulse off and pulled back more gently that his panicked emotions screamed at him to do, but less gently than before. Neji could see his own reflection in Shikamaru's dark, glass-like eyes, and he saw the same panicked emotions creeping onto his face before Shikamaru blinked and the reflection was gone.

"Neji?" He asked with concern in his voice, reaching out to grasp Neji's arm. "What's wrong?"

 _Nothing and everything at the same time!_ Neji's mind supplied. He flinched away from Shikamaru's searching hand before it made contact with his arm, stumbling backwards to break free of the shadows around him that suddenly felt constricting until his back hit his dresser and he slid down to sit on the floor. In passing, his foot had stuck the chessboard, scattering the pieces across his bedroom floor, and Shikamaru followed the paths of the pieces until the all came to rest before glancing back up to Neji's face, which he was sure still had traces of panic on it.

"Neji?" He repeated, but strangely, more calmly this time. "Are you alright?"

Neji opened his mouth to respond, to give some false assurance, anything, not nothing would come out. Luckily, he was saved from having to actually say anything by his ringtone, signalling that his cell phone was getting a call. Without thinking, his eyes flicked to where his phone was laying on the table next to his bed before he remembered the what had happened the last time he had glanced at his helpfully interrupting phone during a heated moment with the phantom. Even more panic growing in his chest, his breath caught in his throat and he snapped his head back to look at Shikamaru, but his lungs relaxed and resumed their normal flow of air to his lungs when he saw that the phantom was still standing where he had been, even though shadows were gathering around his feet as if preparation for a sudden departure.

"Who is it?" Shikamaru asked, but some of the life was gone from his voice.

A little unsteadily, Neji stood up so he could look at the screen of the ringing phone, and his eyebrows knitted together in confusion when he saw the name the person calling him. "It's Sasuke." He reached down automatically to pick up the phone and stare at the screen. "Why is he calling me? Don't tell me… something happened?"

"Is something important going on?" Shikamaru demanded, his voice suddenly sounding very alive again. "Is there something wrong with Sasuke?"

"No, he just said that his father was worried about him a week ago and had pulled him back to Chicago early… though he did say that his father didn't say what he was worried about."

"You should probably take it, then."

Neji looked up in surprise at Shikamaru's words, unable to say to himself that he wasn't disappointed that the phantom hadn't demanded that he ignore the call and finish what they had started. _Not that I knew exactly what we had started…_ But Shikamaru was right; given everything that had happened over the summer, it probably wasn't the best idea to ignore the call.

"I probably should." Neji raised the phone, and saw as he did so that Shikamaru's shadows were starting to twine about his body, and knew without knowing how that this meant that he was going to disappear soon. "Wait!" He called out reflexively, unsure himself why he was stopping the ghost from leaving.

The progress of the shadows around Shikamaru's body stopped, and he arched one characterized eyebrow at Neji. "Yes?"

"Well- I… I mean…" Neji floundered a few seconds before squaring his shoulders. "You're not going to leave now and just mess with me for another whole week, are you?"

Something in Shikamaru's eyes unmistakably softened. "I've already proven my point. There would be no reason to do so a second time."

A hopeful smile stole across Neji's face, though he tried to deny it. "Then you'll come back tomorrow?"

A single one of Shikamaru's eyebrows twitched upwards delicately. "At six?"

"It's a date." Neji used the figure of speech deliberately, just to see Shikamaru's reaction, but he read nothing in the phantom's face except a faint amusement at what was likely, to him, a completely transparent gesture.

"I'll leave the board," was he said in response before the shadows swirled up around him and he sank through the floorboards, leaving no trace of his presence behind and Neji alone in his bedroom.

A faint buzz from his phone alerted Neji that he hadn't picked up in time and the call had been forwarded to his voicemail, and Sasuke had left him a message. He didn't bother listening to the message, instead selecting Sasuke's name to call him back. The call was picked up after the first ring, as if Sasuke still had his phone in his hand.

"Sasuke?" Neji asked brusquely, still distracted and out of focus from Shikamaru's arrival and subsequent departure. "What's up? Did something happen?"

"Neji…"

The word was choked, as if the person on the other end of the line had a stuffy nose, and their voice was thick as if from tears. The sound immediately snapped Neji back to reality, and he stood up sharply.

"Sasuke? What's wrong? Did something happen? Are you alright?" The questions burst rapid-fire from Neji's mouth until he clamped a hand over it, forcing himself to be quiet to listen to the voice on the other end of the line.

"I'm fine; I'm sorry if I scared you," Sasuke answered thickly, and Neji felt his heart descend from his throat to somewhere closer to where it should be. "I just… I didn't know who else I could call…"

"What happened?" Neji asked, but more calmly this time, even though his heart was still beating faster than normal. "No one's hurt-?"

"No!" Sasuke quickly assured him with a slight cough. "No one's hurt. I… I just… I went to see my older brother, Itachi, in the psychiatric ward today."

Neji's throat immediately tightened. His first, instinctive thought was one of relief, or perhaps even happiness for Sasuke, but it was followed just as quickly by confusion. Itachi had been a figure that represented a lot of conflicting emotion and repressed feelings for Sasuke for years, so it was a good thing that Sasuke had made the decision to reconnect with him- at least, theoretically. But what had gone wrong to make him this upset?

After swallowing hard, Neji foraged ahead carefully. "And? Did it not go well?"

"Not go well!" The words exploded out of Sasuke, drilling themselves from the phone into Neji's ear with enough force to make him wince. "It went fucking perfect! Couldn't have gone better if I'd planned every word spoken in that room myself!"

Neji frowned, now even more confused than before. "I'm sorry, I don't quite understand. Why are you so upset?"

"My father just got a call," Sasuke answered morosely, and Neji could hear the misery in his voice escalating. "Itachi escaped from the hospital this afternoon. No one knows where he is."

All the air went out of Neji as if he had been punched in the gut. His struggled to take in enough air to form a coherent response, a part of his mind in the back of his head wondering in a detached way if he, who had never met nor cared for Sasuke's older brother, was reacting like this, how much worse would it have been for the people who had been close to him.

Luckily, Neji was relieved of the responsibility of speaking as Sasuke continued as if he hadn't stopped. "But that's not the worst of it… the last thing he said to me before I left was a promise that I would see him again tomorrow. Well, obviously that's not going to happen now."

Neji's chest tightened as he tried desperately to think of what he should say. He was usually pragmatic in the way he dealt with things, so he didn't know what he could, let alone should, do in the face of Sasuke's distress. Should Neji comfort Sasuke as if he had experienced a loss, or a betrayal? Should he sympathize with Sasuke, or get him to think about it from his brother's perspective? Did he even have any right to interfere in this situation? Sure, Sasuke had called him, but Neji felt like he didn't know enough about Uchiha family customs or Itachi himself to make a decision either way on the matter.

In the end, he didn't, choosing to keep his words carefully neutral instead. "How are you and your family doing?"

"Ha!" Sasuke gave a brief laugh, devoid of humor. "I think my mother's shut herself in the bathroom and is refusing to come out, and my father let me know that he was missing by hauling me up and screaming in my face that I was the last person to see him, so I must have been the one who helped him escape. But other than that, I think we're all fine here."

Okay, back to the cynical sarcasm. Neji remembered this part of Sasuke as being one he didn't particularly like. "Not to be rude, Sasuke, but why did you call me? I'm a few thousand miles and two time zones away; I don't see how I could possibly be of any help to you."

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line before Sasuke spoke again. "Way to rub my lack of friends in my face, Neji."

 _Whoops_. Neji winced. "Sorry about that. But really, can I do something for you? Is there anything you need to talk about?" _Preferably something ghost-related, because that's all I'm really good at._

"No, I guess not," Sasuke sighed thickly, and Neji felt a wash of guilty relief flood through his system that he immediately tried to stem, but to no avail. He did not like to deal with upset people. His professional dealings with the impartial and unimpassioned Hyuuga clan elders had made him accustomed to interacting with others without the cumbersome hinderance of emotions, and that had gradually bled over into his private life as well. "I guess I just wanted to tell someone before I exploded…. Sorry for calling you in the middle of the night; you don't need to hear about my problems."

"It's not a problem," Neji countered gently, carefully reminding himself that emotions were like eggshells and could crack and create a mess at the slightest pressure applied in the wrong way. "Remember, it's not as late here as it is where you are. If you need someone to talk to about something, I'm here."

Sasuke snorted lightly. "Thanks, even if I know you're only being nice to me because I'm upset."

"What? Never."

"Yeah, yeah. Thanks for listening to my rant, Neji. I feel a bit better now."

"That's good, at least." Neji walked a few steps and sat down on his bed. "Hey, while we're already talking, how have things worked out with your father about the Akatsuki? Do you think he or anyone else is suspicious about what really happened?"

"As far as I know, he bought the story, and he's the only person I have to convince. How about on your end?"

Neji winced, thinking about his most recent bout of mentally draining questioning. "They were suspicious from the beginning, but I think I've managed to convince them. They haven't taken Hinata out of my care, at least. Other than that, I don't know."

Neji heard Sasuke sigh on the other end of the line. "I guess that's as good as it gets."

"For now, at least." Neji glanced at the clock next to his bed. "Isn't it past eleven where you are, Sasuke? Shouldn't you be going to bed?"

"Eleven? Are you serious?" The incredulity was clear in Sasuke's voice, and Neji was glad that he'd managed to take his mind off things at least, if nothing else. "Eleven is early for a college student! Haven't you ever pulled the trick where you finish the term paper at four in the morning of the day it's due?"

"Hm. Can't say I ever have." Neji hadn't - despite being several years older than Sasuke, he had never attended a formal university and had been mostly instructed by private tutors, and the single degree that was framed somewhere in his closet he had gotten through taking online classes. Since his future had been laid out for him the moment he had been born by the Hyuuga family elders - much like every other Hyuuga - he had never considered higher education that he would never use nor need important- but Sasuke didn't need to know that. "In any case, you're probably overtired. You'll feel better after you sleep some."

Neji heard Sasuke sigh again on the other end of the line. "I suppose you're right. Thanks again for listening to my mental breakdown, and let me know if I can do anything to help with your family."

"It's not likely, but I'll keep it in mind. And the same extends to you as well, of course." Neji glanced at his clock again. "I have to be up and out by six tomorrow, so I have to let you go. Are you okay now?"

"Yeah, I'm mostly fine. Just stunned from letting go of a decades long grudge and opening myself up only to be sucker-punched in the gut about a second later, is all. I'll survive." This time, Neji chose not to remark on Sasuke's sarcasm, and he sighed again. "Goodnight, Neji. I hope we don't have to talk again soon; I'm sick of emergencies."

"Well said. Bye, Sasuke."

With that, Neji ended the connection and flopped backwards onto his bed with a sigh. This evening had been confusing, to say the least. The only good thing that had come out of it was the chessboard still sitting in the middle of his room.

The chessboard. Despite the conversation he had just had with Sasuke, Neji could help but smile a little at the thought. His phone gave out a sharp tone again, the one he recognized as the tone for his work email, but he ignored it. He could get it in the morning with the rest of the paperwork he had set aside. The smile still refusing to leave his face, he leaned over to turn off his bedside lamp and settled down to sleep.


	4. Freedom

Ah! I said I was going to upload on Sundays, and this barely didn't make it! It's extra long to make up for it though, and *cough cough* uh... lemon warning...

I almost didn't write this chapter because I was worried about putting a lemon so close to the beginning, and not the main pairing... and then I said, screw it, it's my story and I can write what I want! So flagrant homosexuality, graphic yaoi lemon warning, all that jazz and enjoy the chapter!

On a side note, This beginning should also probably at the end of last chapter instead of the beginning of this one, but oh well.

Addi out!

* * *

Shikamaru floated six stories above a Seattle alley way in which a homeless man was tossing uncomfortably and trying to sleep in a pile of assorted fabric scraps and cardboard, leaning against the backside of an apartment building as calmly as he had once leaned against the wall of the hallways in the Hokage. Shadows swirled around him, cloaking his presence from anyone - ghost or still alive - with the skills to sense it. Of course, it was only a rudimentary cloak, and if anyone had been actively looking for him, they would have found him fairly quickly, particularly if they were using the Byakugan eyes of the Hyuuga family. Luckily for Shikamaru, however, the only Hyuuga within a several mile radius of his cloaked form was sleeping soundly on the other side of the window he was currently staring through.

It was late August, a time in Maine that would be horribly hot and humid, far too sticky for his tastes, even as a ghost, but here in Seattle the ever-present layer of clouds in the sky - even when it wasn't actively raining - prevented the air from becoming too hot, though it was still rather humid. As such, the man sleeping in the bed through the window could make it through the night in his full-body pajamas, though he soon kicked aside all but his sheet as his body rejected the over-heating he had subjugated himself to. Really, Shikamaru had to wonder, why were the pajamas - the old fashioned kind rich old men wore in movies set a hundred years in the past - necessary? From observing all the clothing he had worn when he had been in Konoha, Shikamaru knew that Neji usually covered up as much skin as he could, often spurning short and short-sleeved shirts in favor of attire that was more professional - and much more uncomfortable in the heat. Why, though? It was another one of the mysteries that he was desperate to solve.

The top button of Neji's shirt had come undone during his sleeping movements, and as Shikamaru watched, the fabric slipped down his chest and showed off the hard ridge of a collarbone and the beginning of a firm pectoral muscle. The teasing line of fabric dipped tantalizingly close to where a pert nipple would be hiding, and Shikamaru knew it would take very little effort for him to call it further down… all in the name of making Neji more comfortable in the heat, of course…

 _No._ This kind of thinking had to stop right there. Shikamaru had worked too hard over the past week to get rid of it for it to come slinking back now. He wasn't in this for just his own pleasure. In a game, you didn't get hurt if you could make the rules. But in real life, like warfare, there were no clear-cut rules, and playing by the ones make up by another person was sometimes the only option.

Keeping his face deliberately blank, Shikamaru pushed away from the wall at his back and shoved his hands in his pockets. It looked like he was going to be in Seattle for a while, so he'd better do some reconnaissance and figure out the ghosts of the city so he knew which ones he should befriend and which ones he should avoid. After all, a powerful spirit like him couldn't expect to live in the heart of the city for much longer without being discovered by at least one other ghost of draugr level or above. Keeping his hands tucked firmly in his pockets, he let go of the shadows surrounding him, shrugging his shoulders slightly as they evaporated from around his body to dismiss the army coat he was wearing and call up a more modern t-shirt and pair of denim jeans, cut off just below the knee.

Leaning forward with his hands still firmly in the pockets of his new attire, Shikamaru took a step forward in the air and his foot sank down a good six inches before stopping on what appeared to be solid air, like he had taken a step down on a flight of stairs. He repeated the motion with his other foot and then with the first one again, stepping down that set of steps in a circle, like he was walking down a spiral staircase. When he neared the bottom, he saw that the ghost of the homeless man trying to fall asleep in his seedy pile of trash - and failing because he was dead - had already noticed him, and he smiled without pity.

 _Good. At least I won't have to try and "_ wake" _him. That would be troublesome._

"Wh… who are you?" The ghost stuttered, pulling away from Shikamaru's form as he stared down at him without any expression on his face.

Suddenly, Shikamaru smiled reassuringly and leaned down close to the homeless ghost, extending a hand to him.

"Oh, that doesn't really matter. I'd like to ask you a few questions, though. Don't worry; I don't want to hurt you. I'm just looking for someone, and I think you may be able to help me find them."

* * *

Itachi didn't remember falling asleep, but some time after they had left the city he was shaken awake by Kisame's large hand falling on his shoulder.

"Wake up, Itachi. We're at the halfway point."

"Hmmmm…?" Itachi pulled his head up from its soft resting place, realizing belatedly that it was Kisame's lap. "Where are we?"

His foggy mind registered that the car engine had stopped just before the door on Kisame's side opened and his pillow was forcibly take from him. It wasn't long, however, before he heard his own door open and felt Kisame reach around him to undo his seatbelt.

"A safe house," Kisame said as he pulled Itachi from the car. "We're switching drivers. They will keep going in case the police caught our plates, and we'll stay here for the night. Another car will come pick us up in the morning."

But Itachi only heard the first part of what Kisame said. His attention had been caught by something else, something he had yearned to feel for the past eight years: clean, fresh air. Evening had fallen, Itachi could tell from the slight zip in the air, leaving the moisture in the humid air to collect on the grass his shoes swished through. In the distance, small songbirds were chirping and a squirrel chattered, the sounds and smells of the city left far behind them. Unable to help himself, Itachi collapsed to his knees in the damp grass, wetting the fabric of his pants, and let his fingers trail, trembling, through the wondrous plants. _How long had it been since I've touched real grass?_ He wonders dimly, too overcome by raw emotion for any other thought to take over his mind. _And have I ever appreciated it like this before?_

"Itachi?" Kisame asked in growing concern, but Itachi just threw his head back and inhaled deeply of the freshly scented air.

"Kisame…" He whispered in wonder, trailing his fingers along in the grass until they came to a small twig, which he picked up and ran his fingertips across the rough, knobbly bit of wood. "It's real, this is real…. It's beautiful."

Kisame's hands came down on Itachi's shoulders without warning, and he leaned his cheek against one hand and reached up to grab the other one, feeling the warmth of his body close behind him.

From somewhere back by the car, Itachi heard one of the drivers shout something to Kisame, but he didn't pay attention to what it was. Behind him, Kisame answered quickly that they were fine and the drivers were good to leave; he would take care of everything here. This was followed by a final reminder that they should get inside as quickly as possible, just in case, which Kisame gave a noncommittal grunt to and instructed the men to leave.

A few seconds later, Itachi heard the car roar to life behind him, then it backed up, turned around, and disappeared down the road, leaving behind only the vanishing sound of its engine, but he didn't pay it much mind. He was too drunk on the sensations around him to care much about the car, or even Kisame's grasp as he pulled him to his feet.

"Itachi, are you sure you're alright?"

"I… I'm fine," Itachi gasped, grasping onto Kisame's shirtfront for support and feeling the sunglasses that Kisame must have returned to his face when he was sleeping slip down his nose. "God, Kisame, I'm outside! It's so clean and fresh and I just know it's green and beautiful and… and…" A dry sob found its way into Itachi's throat, choking him for a moment. "It doesn't smell of disinfectant, or hospitals or medicine, and there's no doctors who pump you full of chemicals to turn your brain to mush or nurses who bring you plasic spoons instead of real ones or heart rate monitors or video surveillance or… or…" Overcome by emotion, Itachi threw his arms around Kisame's chest - which was so large he had trouble getting all the way around it - and buried his face against his neck, feeling the thin, perfect lines carved into his skin brush against his own cheek. "Thank you, Kisame. You did it; you made the one wish I had come true. I don't know what else to say besides thank you… so I'll say it as many times as I need."

"You don't need to," Kisame said gently, brushing the back of Itachi's hair with his hand. "I already know."

"But I want to say it anyway." Itachi's arms tightened around Kisame, and he turned his face so his lips were almost kissing the scars on Kisame's neck as he spoke. "Thank you, Kisame. _Thank you._ "

Kisame must have been surprised by the words or the move, because he was silent and still for a few seconds before he cleared his throat almost uncomfortably, gently shifting so he was cradling Itachi's head against his chest instead of it being close to his neck. "Um, Itachi…?"

"Yes, Kisame?"

"I, uh, have something for you…"

Something for him? Itachi pulled back and tilted his face upwards, even if he couldn't look at Kisame's face. "What is it?"

"Here…" Without warning, Kisame snatched the sunglasses off Itachi's face, revealing his ruined eye sockets to the fresh, clean air. Itachi hissed a the loss and tried instinctively to cover his face, but Kisame quickly overpowered him and turned him around, and before he could react, something soft was pressed over his scarred eyes.

"Kisame?" He asked in confusion as he felt Kisame tie the ends of the thing he had pressed over his eyes behind his head. "What are you doing?"

"I had them make it special for you," Kisame replied gruffly. "It's a bandana, but made a little differently and from a different fabric so it would be more comfortable for you."

"A bandana?" Itachi repeated slowly, still not completely understanding.

There was an awkward pause as Kisame scuffed one foot in the grass, the sound pummeling against Itachi's ears like the ticking of a clock. "You know…" Kisame muttered a little nervously, the faint sound of rustling hair, as if he was scratching the back of his head, coming to Itachi's ears. "It's got our colors on it…"

 _Our colors…_

Itachi's hand crept up to cover his mouth, his voice lost somewhere in between his lungs and the lump that suddenly formed in his throat. _Our colors._ Not the gang's colors, not his colors, but theirs. He was included in the people who wore those colors and would be a part of them. The gesture was as sweet as it was unexpected, and Itachi loved Kisame all the more for it.

Wait…

Loved him?

Kisame apparently took Itachi's silence in the opposite way, because the sound of his feet shuffling in the damp grass assaulted Itachi's ears, as if he was nervously shoving his hands in his pockets and looking away from Itachi. "You don't have to wear it," he muttered low enough that Itachi almost didn't hear him. "Just until I can get you something else to put over your scar… It's not that important…" But his tone of disappointment belayed those words, telling Itachi exactly how important it was to him.

A huge smile cracking across Itachi's face, he threw himself in Kisame's direction and hoped the bigger man would be able to catch him. He almost missed and stumbled on the grass, but Kisame grabbed him around the waist before he fell, giving him the opportunity to throw his arms around him again.

"I'll never take it off!" Itachi swore with the biggest grin he had worn in his life on his face, his hand finding Kisame's cheek and feeling an answering grin push the ridges of his cheekbones higher.

"Really?" He asked, picking Itachi up and swinging him around like a child. "You really mean it?"

Itachi's stomach had dropped out as he had felt himself being hoisted in the air, but not from fear. When Kisame slowed his spinning to a stop, he didn't let Itachi down, so he was left suspended a foot or so above the ground, both hands on Kisame's cheeks and his face angled down toward his. "Of course I do," he smiled almost on a whisper. "I owe you so much, Kisame. My humanity, my sanity, and now, my freedom."

"You were perfectly sane when I found you," Kisame said back just as quietly, but Itachi was already shaking his head.

"But for how much longer?" He slid his hand upward so his thumbs rested on Kisame's temples, then using them as a guide, leaned down and rested his own forehead against Kisame's. "My point is, Kisame, I would be honored to spend the rest of my life working with you, in any capacity."

"Working with me?" Kisame asked mischievously, readjusting his grip so he was supporting Itachi with one hand and the other was resting on the back of his neck. "Or just… with me?"

Itachi threw his head back and laughed, the first real laugh he'd made since he'd been freed. The sound was like honey to his parched ears, but the kind of honey that's been left to sit a long time and has crystallized into a rough sugar that's somehow more delicious than the new bottle, aged and having spent a long time waiting to be used. "Either way works."

"Itachi, you're too much," he heard Kisame say, his voice soft.

"No," Itachi said back, just as softly. "Everything is too much. The sounds and the smells and the feel of everything is better than I remembered, better than I could ever imagined. I want to stay here forever and explore the whole world at the same time. Kisame, I want-"

He suddenly broke off, surprised when he realized the words set to come out of his mouth next were _I want to kiss you._

"What do you want, Itachi?" Kisame asked, and Itachi tilted his head back down to face him.

 _Well, we did have a certain "promise",_ he thinks to himself, unable to stop a sly grin from sneaking across his face. "Kisame, do you remember what you said to me? Our non-verbal promise?"

"Promise?"

"Mm-hm." Itachi laid his hand on Kisame's cheek again as a reference point for his lips. "I think it went something along the lines of 'this can't mean anything right now, but when you're free, perhaps it can then…' or something like that. Do you remember now? It was quite a long time ago, after all."

"Remember it?" The words rumbled deeply from Kisame's chest. "I've been waiting for months for the moment when you would walk out of that hospital and fall into my arms."

"Well, technically, I fell into a net and you were the one who pushed me, but I think I can let that one slide."

A growl formed low in Kisame's throat, vibrating Itachi's hand pressed against his cheek. "You'd better."

"Oh, please," Itachi murmured, leaning in closer. "You already apologized, and I already forgave you. Mostly. Now just shut up and ravish me."

Kisame had probably intended to respond to that, which was why his mouth was open when Itachi leaned in to kiss him. His aim was off slightly and he almost bit his own tongue when he collided with Kisame's face with a little more force than he expected, having misjudged the distance between them, but he soon corrected his angle and slipped his tongue into Kisame's already open mouth, surprising the larger man with the bold move. However, Kisame didn't let him keep the upper hand for long and swiftly gained control of Itachi with the hand at the back of his neck, tugging him down harder and making it impossible for him to pull away.

Itachi could only marvel at Kisame's strength as he continued to hold him in the air with one arm while the other ran through his hair, never letting the downward pressure subside. A shiver went down his spine as Kisame purposefully attacked his mouth with his tongue, rolling powerfully against Itachi's own tongue. With a fervor that almost bordered on desperation, Itachi seized Kisame's jaw in both hands and kissed him back with as much force as he could muster.

Abruptly, Kisame pulled away, leaving Itachi to gasp like a drowning man just rescued from a watery grave, having forgotten how to breathe when he had been connected at the mouth to Kisame, then he dropped Itachi to the ground. While he had enjoyed his brief stint being taller than the bigger man, Itachi didn't complain as he was reduced to his normal height, especially when Kisame's hands settled at his waist and pulled his hips forward until they pressed against his own. Itachi stifled a moan at the contact, embarrassed at the ease of his reaction. Since he was always under some kind of surveillance or other in the hospital, it had been a very long time since he'd allowed himself to get turned on, and he was becoming so embarrassingly quickly.

"Ah, Itachi…" Kisame murmured heatedly in Itachi's ear, one hand traveling down his back to grab his ass and give a gentle squeeze, eliciting another embarrassed moan from his willing captive. "I've been waiting for this for so long, I almost can't believe it's real, that you're really here…"

Itachi looped his arms around Kisame's neck and went in to kiss him again, misjudging the distance again but not as badly as before. His face was tilted upwards this time instead of downward, but he still felt Kisame's hand at the back of his neck, urging him forward and deeper. He couldn't help but let his breathing become ragged as he felt his body start to tingle every place Kisame touched him. When they separated again, he felt his heart pounding, completely free from the constraints of a monitor for the purpose of keeping him calm.

"You can believe it," he whispered, not able to see the expression Kisame's face but knowing the other man was as affected by the kiss as he was by the feeling of his breath against his own skin in ragged, uncontrolled pants. "I'm here… and I don't plan on leaving."

He pressed a quick kiss to Kisame's cheek, exactly where he planned it this time; the first two misses had been enough for his to map out where Kisame was in relation to him.

Kisame groaned and pulled Itachi's lower body closer, and Itachi was forced to bite his lower lip in order to keep a similar sound from escaping him. "For months I've been watching you, Itachi," Kisame admitted, smoothing the hair back from Itachi's face, his fingers lingering on the headband that he himself had tied over his eyes. "You drove me crazy with every little thing you did."

Itachi couldn't stop a small smile from forming on his lips. "Really?"

Shifting a little guiltily, Kisame confessed, "I spent way too much time staring at you, imagining…. All I wanted to do was forget about the video and the heart rate monitor, pin you to that bed, rip your clothes off and have my wicked way with you."

Undaunted by the explicit confession, Itachi pressed himself closer. "And now?" He teased gently, sliding a hand up Kisame's chest in the hopes of provoking him.

Catching the teasing hand, Kisame whispered hotly in Itachi's ear, "And now I'm trying to resist the temptation to throw you down right here and fuck you into the ground."

Itachi tilted his head to the side, considering it.

"…I'd probably let you do it."

That drew another groan from Kisame. "Don't push my willpower. It wouldn't be safe; we need to get inside in case the car was being chased…"

"Bring me inside then, Kisame," Itachi murmured seductively, running his uncaptured hand up his captor's chest. " _Take_ me inside."

From the guttural sound that came out of Kisame's throat and the way he seized Itachi's other hand in the same manner as the first, Itachi knew the bigger man had not missed his deliberate double entendre. It only took a few seconds for him to make up his mind, and before Itachi knew what was happening, Kisame had hoisted him up in the air and was walking in the direction he assumed the safe house was in. After about ten steps, he paused only slightly, and Itachi heard the sound of a door banging open and then slamming shut again behind him. The house was quiet, but pleasantly so, the only background noises the hum of an air conditioner and the creaking of the floorboards beneath his and Kisame's combined weight. He only had a few seconds to take this all in, however, because without missing a beat, Kisame took four steps into the house and tossed Itachi down on a piece of furniture - swinging his arm out for balance at the shock of being dropped and finding its back, Itachi determined it to be a couch - then came down after him.

"I hope-" Itachi started, but Kisame cut him off by placing his hand over his mouth.

"We'll have no more of your sass, Itachi Uchiha," he warned in a dangerously sexy voice. "Not now."

Smirking a little to himself, Itachi licked Kisame's hand, running his tongue down the length of one of his fingers as he withdrew it. "'M not an Uchiha anymore," he gasped out, reaching up blindly and finding Kisame's cheek. "Itachi Uchiha died in that hospital eight years ago. I'm just… just Itachi now."

"Well, _just Itachi,_ would you like me to kiss you again?"

Itachi tried to snort disparagingly, but the effect was ruined by his elevated heartbeat and breathing and - he suspected - his red cheeks. "You have to ask?"

Chuckling, Kisame leaned down again and pressed his lips against Itachi's again, ending their brief out of conversation. Itachi could tell that Kisame was supporting his own body weight so he wouldn't crush the man beneath him with one hand braced next to Itachi's head, the other hand resting almost tenderly against Itachi's cheek, but Itachi suddenly didn't care about whether his lungs would work or not; he just wanted Kisame closer, so he looped both arms around Kisame's neck and pressed himself upwards to try and feel more of those muscles against his body.

Kisame's tongue suddenly pressed against the seam of Itachi's lips, and he let him inside his mouth immediately, feeling a surge of pure arousal run down his spine at the feeling of that demanding mouth covering his own. Eagerly meeting the thrusts of Kisame's tongue with his own, Itachi let it be known that he would not be submitting without a fight - until Kisame broke away and instead attached himself to Itachi's neck, dragging the hand that had been at Itachi's cheek down his chest at the same time, and Itachi suddenly found that he wasn't so opposed to submitting anymore.

"Ah- ahh!"

Kisame bit down on Itachi's neck, eliciting a cry from him. Quickly, he pressed a gentle kiss to the hurt area before pulling back slightly. "Did I hurt you?"

"Do… do it again…" Itachi ordered on a breathy gasp, pushing himself harder against Kisame's body. Without meaning to, he bumped the arm Kisame was balancing his weight on, sending his heavy, musclebound body crashing down on top of him.

 _Finally!_ Itachi moaned, his hands traveling down Kisame's back from where they'd been around his neck, loving the feel of Kisame's hard body against his own and craving more of it. _Too… much… clothes…. Yeah, that's the problem right now…_

After a few seconds of searching, Itachi found the hem of Kisame's shirt and struggled to pull it upward, but it was trapped between their bodies, and he was forced to admit defeat with a frustrated noise. Apparently realizing what Itachi was trying to do, Kisame sat up, straddling Itachi's waist, and pulled his shirt over his head with the soft sound of fabric drawing across flesh, discarding it. It hit the ground somewhere to the right of the couch with a soft thud of impact, but Itachi was to preoccupied to figure out where.

His fingertips glided forward until they touched a hard stomach, tracing along ridges of defined muscle. He would have liked to take his time "looking" at Kisame, but the tension of the moment was too much and his hands moved quickly up Kisame's chest to rest on the balls of his shoulders.

"How the hell do you have so many muscles?" He muttered jealousy, suddenly extremely aware of the fact that he'd been completely immobile for the past eight years, and his body would definitely show it.

"They're a relic of the days of working under my father," Kisame answered, and Itachi was proud to hear that he was breathing just as hard as he was. "It's easier to keep them once you've got them then have to start from scratch again, so I always made sure not to let them go too much."

"So you were always anticipating going back?" Itachi asked.

"No… but I always wanted to prepare for the chance that I would have to defend myself again." Kisame leaned back down again, pressing a finger to Itachi's mouth. "But is that really what you want to discuss right now?"

In lieu of a response, Itachi opened his mouth and engulfed the finger inside, gently biting down on the knuckle. Kisame chuckled darkly and leaned down again, running his free hand up Itachi's stomach underneath his shirt. Squirming slightly underneath Kisame at the feeling, Itachi opened his mouth and allowed Kisame's finger to slide out before reaching down and trying to tug off his own shirt. He got further than with Kisame's shirt but not all the way, making it almost past his shoulder before he got fouled up in the neck hole and the back of the shirt got snagged between his body and the couch.

Lightly, Kisame took the shirt from Itachi's grasp and finished pulling it over his head, leaving them both bare chested. One hand rested on Itachi's upper side, his thumb almost brushing his nipple, and the other ran down his stomach with purposeful intent. Itachi got the feeling that Kisame was looking at him; he could almost feel the hot gaze raking over his overly sensitive skin. He felt like he should be embarrassed by the blatantly sexual look, but he was too aroused at this point to care.

"Stop… stop teasing me like this, Kisame," he complained roughly, throwing one arm over the band around his head and arching his back so his pelvis brushed up against Kisame's. "I can't… can't take it any more…"

"Really?" Kisame seemed surprised as his hand trailed down Itachi's chest to rest against the bulge in his pants that was the result of his straining erection. "That was faster than I anticipated."

"Yeah, well, you try living in a ward where you're monitored twenty four hours a day, seven days a week for eight years, and you see how sensitive you get-!" Itachi snapped, but broke off with a moan as Kisame squeezed gently.

Heat shot through Itachi's abdomen as Kisame touched him through his pants, using only the gentlest of forces, but it was still enough to send a warning shiver up his spine.

"St-stop!" Itachi cried hoarsely, trying to push Kisame's hand away, but it was too late and he burst apart still inside his clothes, crying out and thrusting unconsciously upwards into Kisame's palm.

"Ah-! Nn… Ahh!"

Embarrassment caused Itachi's face to flush when the last shock of his orgasm left his system, and he sent what would have been a glare at Kisame had he been able to see. "See what you made me do? Now I made a mess-!"

Kisame shut him up by grabbing his head roughly by the hair and pulling him forward for a harsh, demanding kiss. Feeling his embarrassment sliding away, Itachi kissed back, and they were both panting hard when they broke apart.

"That was the hottest fucking thing I have ever seen," Kisame growled in Itachi's ear, his hand still tangled in his hair.

If Itachi's cheeks could get any redder than they already were, that single sentence made him hit the maximum color saturation. "D-duly n-noted."

"Here, let me help you out of that." Kisame reached down between them and swiftly undid Itachi's pants, pulling them and his underwear off in a single smooth motion and heaving them somewhere off to the side; Itachi didn't care enough to listen to the sound of their landing to tell exactly where.

He shivered as his entire body was exposed to the air, particularly the damp remains of his orgasm, but he didn't remain bothered by the cold for long. As Kisame's hands brushed his legs and hips in their simple task, Itachi found himself growing hard again, flames coiling up from his stomach to pervade his entire body with an almost violent heat. Embarrassment long forgotten, there was only one thing on Itachi's mind now: he was going to get laid.

His tongue darting out to moisten his bottom lip unconsciously, Itachi reached forward as Kisame was throwing his pants to the side and ran his fingertips down his abdomen until they found the ridge of his waistband, and smiled triumphantly when he found the thing he was looking for.

 _Bingo._

Guided only by his sense of touch, Itachi found the button on Kisame's pants and flicked it open, followed by his fly. Grinning now, he delved inside Kisame's pants to feel the soft material of his boxers against his palm and the heated flesh it encased. He heard Kisame's sharp intake of breath at the sensation, but the bigger man didn't give any indication of stopping him.

"Lie down," Itachi instructed, pushing against Kisame's chest.

"Why?"

"Just do it, dammit!" Itachi snapped angrily. "It's my turn."

Itachi though he heard a stifled laugh, but he ignored it and pushed Kisame until he leaned back on the couch, and Itachi kneeled between his legs. His fingers pushed at the waistband of Kisame's pants for a moment before he decided it wasn't worth the effort and just reached inside his underwear.

The rough sound Kisame made when Itachi grabbed him gave him more confidence, and he slowly pulled his erection out of his pants, feeling it. It was hot, and pulsed in Itachi's hands. He wished, suddenly, that he could see it, but he dismissed the thought as quickly as he could. That kind of thinking could be poisonous. Banishing thinking altogether, Itachi ran his hands along Kisame's length a few times to familiarize himself with it, then leaned forward until his lips brushed up against the head.

"It- ah!"

Itachi grinned to himself as his mouth made the descent down Kisame's length, his tongue flicking deftly around it and eliciting a groan from deep within his throat. Itachi hummed in response to the groan, then almost choked as Kisame gasped at the sensation and thrust upwards into Itachi's mouth without warning.

"Gah! I'm sorry!" He cried as he pulled Itachi's head up by the hair. "Are you okay? Did I hurt you?"

Itachi coughed twice before responding. "No… I'm fine." He moved one of his hands so it was pinning Kisame's hip down to the couch - though, if he was being completely honest with himself, Itachi doubted that if Kisame did that again, he would be able to hold him down even it he was ready for it. "I want to do it again."

Without waiting for a response, Itachi bent down and engulfed Kisame in his mouth again, though he was careful not to go too far down too quickly this time. Kisame's hand was still tangled in his hair, and it tightened around a handful of strands almost painfully, but Itachi didn't care. He couldn't believe how much he wanted this.

Suddenly, Itachi jerked in shock as he felt one of Kisame's hands wander down to his ass and squeeze it. He moaned around the flesh in his mouth, and this time Kisame managed not to buck upwards and choke him again. It didn't bother him - he had expected it, and it the feeling of Kisame's hand alone was enough to send heat straight to his already straining erection - and he continued what he was doing, but then he jerked to a stop again when he felt Kisame's finger start to press against his entrance.

"Gn- ah!" Itachi gasped, pulling off of Kisame as he slowly slipped a finger inside him. "Kis… Kisame…"

Without warning, Kisame pushing Itachi back down onto the couch and crouched over him, kissing him hard. Giving up all remaining semblance of self-restraint, Itachi moaned wantonly and writhed underneath him, feeling the press of his erection against his stomach.

 _That's… that's going to be inside me_ , Itachi thought dimly, his body starting to tremble. _I can't wait… it's been too long…_

Kisame pulled back again, and Itachi took a deep breath to force his body to relax. It wouldn't hurt as much if he was relaxed, he knew, and he had waited too long to mess this up. However, as the seconds ticked by and nothing happened, he frowned in confusion.

"Kisame? What are you waiting for?"

A deep inhale, then an exhale, just as deep. "Itachi… maybe we… shouldn't do this."

Itachi couldn't help it; his jaw dropped. "What?"

"Well…" Kisame continued nervously, "I mean, like you said, you haven't had any chance to have sex for the past eight years, and I don't want you to regret jumping on me as your first option just to break that streak… or for you to feel like you had to do it to repay me for getting you out…"

"No!" The word exploded out of Itachi like water out of a pressurized fire hose, and he felt Kisame flinch above him, but he didn't care; he was completely and utterly pissed. "You don't get to wind me up this much just to drop me right before the best part! I am a rational human being and with the mental capacity to decide when and with whom I have sex, so you don't have to worry about me having stupid regrets! If you have them, you should have thought of that before you started taking my clothes off, because I am not going to let you stop now!"

"Itachi-"

"God fucking hell, Kisame, I swear to Christ that if you do not fuck me in the next minute, I will do it myself!" Itachi swore, then stuck two fingers in his mouth and coated them in saliva before reaching down and shoving them inside himself. He heard Kisame's sharp intake of breath as he purposefully spread his legs wider and started stretching himself, throwing his head back with a moan as he hit something inside of him that sent shockwaves of pleasure through his whole body.

"I… I get your point," Kisame gasped out, grabbing Itachi's hand and stopping its movements. "I take back what I said before. I think _that_ was the hottest fucking thing I've ever seen."

"Glad you liked the show!" Itachi tried to snap, but the words lacked bite. "Now, if you please, I'd like to- gah!"

He cut off with an unmanly yelp as his foot slipped off the side of the couch, and Itachi suddenly found himself floundering blindly for purchase. His lack of balance sent him tumbling towards the floor, and he would have hit the hard wooden floorboards if Kisame hadn't caught him at the last moment.

"There's not enough room on the couch…" Kisame muttered, and Itachi's ears perked up.

"What did you say?"

"But we can't move," Kisame continued under his breath as if he hadn't even spoken, his grip on Itachi's arm where he had caught him tightening.

"What do you mean?"

All of a sudden, Kisame came to a decision, and he hauled Itachi off the couch and forced him to his knees in front of it.

"Kisame? What are you doing?"

Kisame didn't bother to respond. Instead, he bent Itachi over the edge of the couch and shoved two fingers inside of him without warning.

"Ah- ahh! Kisame! What are… what are you-"

"As much as I enjoyed watching you have fun all by yourself," he growled predatorily in Itachi's ear, "this is so much more rewarding."

Itachi couldn't hold back the moan that was ripped from his unwilling throat. "You… you're not just going to j-jerk me around again, are you? If you go any further - ah! - I'm not going to l-let you st-stop…. Nnh!"

"I don't plan on stopping," Kisame promised, adding another finger to the two already stretching Itachi, causing him throw his head back and vocalize little meaningless noises as the sensation of being filled burned through his body like a shot of whiskey straight through his veins. He couldn't think, couldn't speak, was helpless to do anything except feel the blazing passion and heat running through him at the touch of Kisame's hands.

"Please… Kis… ame…" Itachi begged when he finally managed to form a complete thought, fisting the material of the couch in his grip as he let his head drop forward. "Please… I'm ready… I need it…"

Kisame withdrew his fingers from inside Itachi, leaving him empty and wanting. Unable to stop himself, Itachi let out a whimper and allowed his neck to go limp, his cheek descending to rest on the rough fabric of the seat cushion. A new, hotter, wave of arousal swept through his body as he felt something thicker than Kisame's fingers press against his opening.

"Yes!" He moaned, trying to arch backwards and urge Kisame inside of him, but Kisame grabbed his hips and held him still.

"Not… yet…" he gasped out into Itachi's ear, leaning forward so their bodies connect, Itachi's back to Kisame's chest, from the waist up.

Itachi barely held back a cry of frustration. "What are you waiting for?"

"'M not waiting…" Kisame grunted. "'M just being careful…"

With that, he started to press his hips forward, first very gently, then with more pressure, until Itachi felt him starting to split him wide open.

"Ah-! Nn- ahhh! Kisame!" He moaned, feeling Kisame's arms wrap around his torso in a show of solidarity as he pushed deeper inside him.

"Am I hurting you?" Kisame asked gently, and Itachi quickly shook his head no, despite the wince that flashed across his face when Kisame's girth stretched him uncomfortably wide. He just had to relax, he repeated to himself, and he would be fine. Taking a deep, shaky breath, Itachi filled his lungs with air before he let it out again, releasing all the remaining tension from his body as he did. Immediately, the pain and discomfort he was feeling faded away until it was completely overshadowed by the pleasure that accompanied it.

Itachi could tell when Kisame was seated fully inside him because the fronts of his pants-clad thighs brushed up against the back of his legs, tickling him with a strange friction. Gently, Kisame turned his head so that his lips were close to Itachi's face, then he kissed him delicately on the cheek. "Do you want me to move?"

Itachi's breath caught in his throat, and he ground back against Kisame with a moan. Apparently that was all the encouragement Kisame needed, because he slowly withdrew until he was almost completely out of Itachi before slamming back into him with sudden unexpected force.

The strength of the thrust drove Itachi's cheek into the couch cushion, and he cried out at the delicious feeling of being filled without caution or remorse. Kisame slowly pulled back before thrusting forward with a second powerful snap of his hips, eliciting another cry from Itachi.

"Kis… a… me-!"

Kisame pushed Itachi's knees further apart on the floor, then brought himself closer, so his knees were resting just inside Itachi's, and started thrusting with a regular rhythm, reaching around to squeeze Itachi's neglected erection and pump it in time to his thrusts. The rough fabric of his pants brushed up against Itachi's bare sensitive ass with every deep, hot rush, and he bit the material of the couch to avoid whimpering at the sensation. His entire body felt hot, like it could explode at any moment, and from the way Kisame's thrust were quickly growing irregular, he knew that neither one of them would last very much longer.

Itachi came first, throwing his head back with a cry as all his muscles tensed in tandem and accidentally hitting Kisame in the face with the back of his head. A couple of sloppy thrusts later and Kisame tensed behind him as well, his arms going around Itachi's torso and crushing him to his large chest as something hot exploded deep inside Itachi. They stayed like that for several minutes, frozen except for the shaking in their exerted limbs and their panting, oxygen-deprived lungs filling with air again and again, riding out the aftershocks of their mutual orgasms.

Kisame broke the silence first, pulling out of Itachi tenderly and standing up behind him with unsteady legs. "Are you… are you okay?"

"Mm… mm." Itachi slowly eased his body upwards so his back straightened out and he was kneeling in front of the couch without bending over. A familiar twinge of pain ran up his spine, but it was nothing major. "Yeah, I'm fine. Honestly, I think my knees hurt worse."

"You sure?" Kisame asked quietly, leaning down and pulling Itachi up from his knees, supporting him with a strong arm.

"I'm _fine_ , Kisame." An embarrassed blush worked its way across Itachi's cheeks. "Actually, I'm more worried about you. Did I really just headbutt you in the face in the middle of having sex?"

"Well, it was more like at the end of it… but yeah."

Itachi winced. "God, that's embarrassing. Is your nose okay?"

"Never better." Kisame wrapped his arms around Itachi and pressed his nose against his neck, as if proving its wholeness. "See? Perfectly fine."

"No, I don't see," Itachi alluded pointedly, but looped his arms around Kisame's neck all the same. The bigger man's arms settled around his waist almost protectively, cradling him against his large form, and Itachi allowed one hand to slip down and rest on Kisame's shoulder. "Kisame?"

"Yes, Itachi?"

"How much time do we have before the next car comes to pick us up?"

"It coming tomorrow morning, so about twelve… no, eleven hours now."

"Good." Itachi's gentle hand turned into an iron grip on Kisame's shoulder. "Because that was the best sex of my life, and I plan on repeating it as soon as possible- though preferably in a place that's not so hard on the knees. Doesn't this house have any, I don't know, beds?"

For a few seconds, Kisame was silent, dumbfounded, and then his hearty laugh rolled over the top of Itachi's head, and he squeezed his blind lover companionably. "Of course this place has a bed; in fact, I'm pretty sure it had two."

"Well, we only need one," Itachi whispered in a matter-of-fact voice that was completely at odds with his breathy tone, reaching up sightlessly to cup Kisame's jaw.

"That's right," Kisame replied, sweeping Itachi up into his arms and walking from the room they were in into the uncharted territory of the rest of the house. "We only need one."


	5. Dreaming and Foreboding

Another chapter up and out! Thanks to Falainakorna for the lovely review- I'm glad I made your day :)

Addi out!

* * *

Neji woke up the next morning before his alarm went off, his wide but uncomprehending eyes fixed on the steadily ticking second hand of his analogue alarm clock as it slowly approached six o'clock. The heaviness of overtiredness made his limbs stiff and unwilling to move, but his body refused to let him sleep because his mind was too busy racing in circles.

He'd dreamed the night before, more vividly than he'd dreamed in a long time. In his dream, his room had suddenly become unbearably hot, so he'd gotten out of bed to open the window, only to be immediately engulfed by a dark shadow that had led him purposefully back to the bed. The shadow had dissipated as soon as they reached the bed, leaving Neji to sit cross legged on his disheveled covers opposite a familiar smug face crowned by a spiky ponytail.

Then for some reason, Neji's sheet had transformed into a huge white snake the size of an anaconda, and had tried to strangle them both before giving up and just swallowing them whole. Eventually, his companion had managed to cut them out of the snake's stomach using only a rusted old tin spoon, the kind used in old army mess kits, whereupon they discovered that snake was no longer a snake, but a huge white whale that looked suspiciously like Moby Dick and had mysteriously managed to beach itself in a clearing in the middle of a forest.

That part of the dream, Neji was fairly sure, was just his overtired brain throwing random shit at his subconscious in an effort to make itself feel better about its lousy showing during his waking hours in the past week, so he paid it little heed. It was the next part of the dream that Neji couldn't get out of his mind.

The beached whale carcass had disappeared as soon as Neji looked away from it, leaving him alone with the physical incarnation of shadow in a clearing that was starting to look uncomfortably familiar. Before he knew it, his companion had crept up behind him and brushed his hair to the side, gently blowing on the nape of his neck before pressing a warm pair of lips to his skin, shadows twining around them both to tie them together in more and more intimate ways.

And that's when the dream got a bit - ahem - _interesting_. Neji's face burned upon remembering, and he shoved his head underneath his pillow, breaking eye contact with his alarm clock. When it went off several minutes later, Neji, for the first time in his life, hit the snooze button and rolled over to face the wall.

He didn't remember falling asleep again, but he must have because sometime hours later, Neji was rudely awoken by a clattering in his kitchen. Instantly on guard, he leapt from his bed and sprinted to open the door of his bedroom, blinking rapidly at the unexpected light pouring in from the windows as he took in the sight of his living room. Everything was exactly as he'd left it the night before, with one exception: a young brown-haired girl was laying in the middle of the floor, having tripped and fallen over something - her own two feet, most likely.

"Hinata?" Neji asked incredulously as his tired eyes forced her face into focus. "What are you doing here?"

Hinata's face turned a deep red as she drew herself into a ball in the middle of the floor. "I-I-I c-came ov-ver t-to p-prac-practice l-like you as-s-sked, N-Ne-j-ji," she stammered, her ever-present stutter growing exponentially worse due to her embarrassment. "The B-Bu-By-Byak-k-ku-Byaku-" She eventually gave out a small squeak and hid her face in her hands, giving up on saying the word now that she was so worked up. "The ey-eyes-s! B-but I c-can l-leave if-f-"

"No!" Neji quickly cut her off, moving forward to help her up. "No, I'm sorry, Hinata; I slept through my alarm. It won't happen again, I promise. Just give me a minute to get changed, and I'll join you and we can start."

"G-get ch-changed…?" If possible, Hinata's face got even redder as she looked at Neji and realized that he was still in his pajamas, and she started to shake harder that a leaf in a hurricane. "I w-woke y-you up-p! I-I-I s-s-s-sor-r-r-r-!"

"Hinata!" Neji grabbed Hinata by the shoulders as her knees buckled to stop the horrible tremors that were wracking her whole body and forced her to look into his face. "It's not your fault, alright? I didn't get up on time. You're perfectly fine. Just breathe, Hinata. Deep breaths, in and out. You can do it. Just breathe…"

He kept up his steady stream of calming words in a soothing tone until he saw Hinata's shoulders start to rise and fall in a smooth, steady rhythm. Eventually, she let her head fall forward against his collarbone as the violent tremors subsided and she was able to stand on her own strength.

"I'm s-sorry, N-Neji," she whispered in as loud a voice as Neji guessed she could call up right then. "I had-d an-noth-ther one. I th-thought th-they were ov-ver."

"It's okay, Hinata," Neji quickly assured her, tousling her hair gently. "You're getting much better; that one didn't last long. I do have to get dressed now, but I'll be back again in just a minute, don't worry and just make yourself comfortable. Okay?"

Hinata gave a tiny nod, looking like she wasn't fooled a bit by his kind words. "O-okay, N-Neji."

"Good girl." Neji gave her hair one last pat before turning back to his bedroom and closing the door behind him.

As soon as there was an obstacle between himself and Hinata, Neji started tearing off his pajamas, ripping open a drawer to find his clothes and get dressed as quickly as possible. Throughout her whole childhood and her teen years up until that point, Hinata had often had small, nervous attacks where her stutter would get worse and she would become physically unable to move her own body, but she'd mostly grown out of them by this point. That she had had one of this magnitude now was worrying, and meant that Neji would have to be extra careful around her today.

The elders of the Hyuuga family had never agreed to send Hinata for either speech or any other kind of therapy, despite both Neji and her father - hundreds of times in Neji's case, and only once for her father - asking, because they didn't want to admit that there was anything wrong with her that meant she needed help. In their eyes, if you were a Hyuuga, you were perfect, and anything less was simply not accepted.

So Neji had taken it upon himself the last few years to help Hinata himself the best he could with both her stutter and her confidence issues that sprang from extreme shyness and self-consciousness caused by the stutter, but he suspected the damage had already been done. If Hinata had gotten professional help when she had been a child, like she'd probably needed, she might have been able to overcome it, but now that she was older it was very likely that both her stutter and her lack of confidence had been completely ingrained into her personality. His interest had been noted quickly by the Hyuuga elders, but instead of punishing him for it, they'd seen the difference between him and Hinata and pounced on it, deciding that he would be her personal tutor in all matters that required someone inside the family so their secrets wouldn't be exposed, mainly learning to control her eyes and the family history. They'd ordered that he become her primary caretaker in all but name, and Neji knew the day when they ordered him to become that couldn't be far off.

Sometimes it was hard for Neji to believe the transformation their relationship had undergone since they were children. He and Hinata were cousins, their fathers brothers, but they'd been raised as siblings ever since Neji's father had died when he was six and she was almost three. Even though they'd been raised so closely, however, Neji had always felt strange around Hinata, and even hated her for a number of years, because of the special treatment she received from the clan elders as the eldest child of the elder son - despite the fact that her father and his had been twins, and his father had only been born minutes after hers. He'd seethed in resentment, watching from a distance for a long time as she'd slowly folded and become crushed, all alone, under the pressure that had made him the hard man he was today, until he'd suddenly been forced into a situation where he'd had to look at her straight on, and he'd been flooded with the urge to protect instead of scoff… but that's a story for another time. He'd already wasted enough time with first expositional flashback, and didn't need to leave Hinata alone for longer than he already had.

Finishing up the buttons on his shirt, Neji ran to his door, tucking the ends of his shirt into his pants as he landed solidly in front of the door, taking a deep breath to calm down his over-excited heart rate before opening up the door with a smile as if he hadn't just been running around his room like a terrified cartoon character outmaneuvering a hail of miraculously untouchable bullets looking for the missing mate to a sock.

"Sorry to keep you," he said calmly as he took his seat on the floor across from where Hinata was sitting, waiting for him. "Where were we again?"

"C-concentration of power around the eyes in order to use the B-Byakugan," she answered timidly, but Neji was relieved to hear that her stutter had diminished again and that she was able to get the word 'Byakugan' out this time. "We were doing focus work."

"Ah, that's right." Neji clasped his hands together. "Let's start on that again, then. Can you talk me through the steps you've learned so far?"

* * *

The homeless ghost had proven useful to Shikamaru, though only marginally so. He'd been able to point Shikamaru in the direction of a heavily ghost-populated area of town, which had in turn yielded him an encounter with innumerable unhelpful specters and one draugr who had managed to hold a decent conversation with him without snapping and trying to murder him - which had happened to him before, and not just with Lee's new little pet sand monster. He'd learned early on in his life as a spirit that it was much less troublesome - and much easier to move around unhindered - if he didn't tussle with every pissed off ghost that attacked him in a confused fury because he looked like their psychotic ex who had stabbed them eleven times with a carving knife or the random _masked_ mugger that had gotten away with their purse/wallet and accidentally killed them in the process.

Dealing with low-class ghosts was always a pain, but sometimes it was the only way to find the path to the top.

In every place where humans gathered, ghosts were bound to gather as well, if only by virtue of the dead that piled up over the years, and just like human society, ghost society had its hierarchies as well. Usually those top spots were taken by the smarter or more reasonable draugrs, or if the city was lucky enough, phantoms, or if they were unlucky enough, wraiths. They were kind of like a mayor or governor for a district of ghosts, though not in so many words; they were often the strongest or had some other redeeming feature that put them above the rest like charisma or intellect, kinda unofficially elected, and nobody remembered their names or paid any attention to them until they were needed.

In Konoha, this position had been occupied by Naruto and himself, though he preferred more often than not to operate solely from the shadows and let Naruto with his exceptional people skills take the brunt of the visual aspect of the position, with the other phantoms as the second level of command. But Konoha, despite being a very old town with generation of ghost culture, not to mention Naruto's preservation power that kept ghosts around longer, was still a small town in comparison to a city like Seattle. Shikamaru would have to work his way up if he wanted to find out who was the most powerful in the city.

That being said, he was fairly close now, he was sure of it. The draugr had lead him to another, older and more senile, draugr, who in turn had lead him to a figure of remarkable clarity, who, finally, had given him a useful tip: over the years, there had been many jumpers in the city. Where better to draw attention to oneself for such an act than at a nationally renowned landmark?

The figure's words had been cryptic, but her meaning was instantly clear to Shikamaru. Jumpers: what else could that refer to but the ghost of someone who had committed suicide by jumping off a building or some other high place?

And in Seattle, what landmark was more nationally renowned than the space needle?

* * *

"...Neji? Are you alright?"

Neji was torn from his thoughts by the concerned voice of his cousin, and he felt a rush of heat to his face in the form of a blush as he snapped out of what he belatedly realized was a unintentioned daydream about his dream the night before. "What? Sorry, Hinata. I wasn't paying attention."

"I asked you if you were alright," Hinata repeated with the tiniest amount of reproach in her timid voice, the equivalent of an annoyed shout from anyone else. "What's going on with you, Neji? You've been spacing out all morning, and you're blushing right now!"

"I'm not blushing!" Neji protested automatically, even though he could feel the heat in his cheeks himself. "I'm fine, Hinata. Nothing's going on."

"You're acting strange!" Hinata protested, even going as far as to lean forward and press a palm against his forehead. "You weren't awake this morning when I came, and there's a full glass of water on the counter that looks like it's been there since last night! There's no way any of these things would be normal for you, or any way you could expect me not to notice! Are you sick? Do you have a fever?"

She was right, about everything, Neji thought as he stared into his cousin's face, closer than normal to his own because she was leaning towards him, and he couldn't help but smile indulgently at her. "You know, Hinata, I do believe that's one of the longest speeches I've ever heard you say. And you didn't stutter at all."

Hinata blushed at the compliment but didn't back down. "I'm serious, Neji! You're not acting normally! Are you sure you're not sick? Are you overtired from all the work Father gives you? Upset about something that happened in that weird little town we visited? Just tell me, Neji!"

Through he tried to hide it, the words "that weird little town" brought a twist of something to Neji's face, and Hinata, perceptive as a Hyuuga should be, caught it.

"I knew something wasn't right when we left! Something happened that you didn't tell me, right? Please, I want to know! I want to be able to help you like you've helped me, Neji, but I can't do that if you shut me out!"

"Hinata-" Neji started, reaching for her, but she pushed away from him and clenched her hand over her heart.

Looking down into her lap, Hinata admitted, "I'm powerless next to you, Neji. You're older than me, stronger than me, and smarter than me." Her gaze snapped up, boring directly into Neji's. "You've always protected me, no matter what, so I want to be able to the same for you! If there's something bothering you, tell me about it! I'm not a helpless little girl anymore!"

 _Not a helpless little girl anymore,_ the dark part of Neji's mind scoffed. _Not in my eyes, you're not, but the same can't be said for the elders. That's why I still hate you, even as I love you… Hinata, you really have no idea about our family. Or me._

 _I haven't always protected you._

Unable to hold Hinata's impassioned gaze for long, Neji looked away. "I appreciate it, Hinata, really, I do, but there's also some things that can't be fixed with just words. I might be in a little bit of a… tricky situation right now, and the less you know about it, the safer you'll be. I'm sorry, but that's all I can tell you for now." When he finished speaking, Neji's eyes darted back to Hinata to gauge her reaction.

For a moment, Hinata looked like she would argue with him, then she abruptly nodded. "I understand, Neji. You're still trying to protect me. But one day, I'll be strong enough to protect you, so you better watch out for me then!"

The bold words said in Hinata's voice, quiet but without a tremble or a stutter, brought the touch of a smile to Neji's lips. "You bet I will."

Hinata sighed lightly. "You still think of me as a child, don't you, Neji?"

The smile disappeared from Neji's face as if it was a hastily scrawled swear on a whiteboard erased by a teacher giving a classroom full of too-innocent faces a stern glare. "Because you are a child." _And you will remain one. Stay a child, Hinata. Away from their influence._

Hinata's hands clenched just the slightest bit in her lap. "I'm not a child anymore, Neji; I'm sixteen-"

"Which is still legally a child," he interrupted calmly, despite the chaos in his chest. "Don't be in such a hurry to grow up. I'd give up a lot of things to be able to go back to when I was your age." _To before I knew._

Unexpectedly, his words caused Hinata to giggle, breaking the tension in the room. "You're such an old man, Neji, and you're only five years older than I am! Young people shouldn't wish that they were still young because they _are_ still young."

"Perhaps you're right," Neji sighed, looking up to the sky, hidden by his ceiling. He was suddenly struck by the wistful urge to see the clouds he knew were hanging above them. "Perhaps I am an old man."

"I didn't mean it like that, Neji," Hinata giggled softly at him, her earlier tone of intensity gone.

"It's alright," Neji responded with a smile, gently reaching over to lay a hand on top of her head. "I know what you meant." He gave a glance at the clock on the wall to see the time. "Gosh, it's later than I thought it was. The elders will be wanting you back soon. See you back here tomorrow?"

"Absolutely!" Hinata jumped up and embraced Neji before flying to the door, all signs of their verbal altercation disappeared like a snake's useless shed skin. "And I'll get it tomorrow, I know I will! Just you wait!"

"Don't forget your umbrella!" Neji called after her, standing up and striding to the door to close it after her as she grabbed her umbrella, gave him one last hug, and snapped it open to protect herself from the rain drizzling from the sky, disappearing down the street.

That morning had been interesting, with both highs and lows in Hinata's confidence, and the abrupt switch between them and other emotions. What had set her into such a state of emotional flux? Neji would have to ask her about when he next saw her. Because she still lived in the main Hyuuga household and he had gotten a separate apartment as soon as he'd turned eighteen, Neji had to pay close attention to her emotions to surmise how she was being treated, rather than being able to witness it firsthand. That was the only drawback to being so far away from the family, though he did still spend a lot of time with Hinata.

With a sigh, Neji closed the door and glanced at the clock again. Because he'd slept in that morning, the work he'd intended to have finished by now was still undone, and he'd have to move quickly if he wanted to get it done in time to go to his orchestra rehearsal this afternoon. With a sigh, he went and sat down at his computer and pulled up his email.

His job was a boring but important one. While the Uchihas, the Hyuugas' sister clan, preferred to respond to troublesome ghosts once they became problems, the Hyuugas didn't have that luxury because their powers lay in higher observation and did not include the offensive powers the Sharingan provided. As such, they preferred to keep a vigilant watch over much of their territory and nip potential problems in the bud before they became issues. It was fantastically efficient way of diminishing ghost-related problems, but it also came with the added burden of much more organizational work, the majority of which fell to Neji. The job was given to him because of his standing in the clan - in the main family, his uncle's family, but not of that family - and was just about as dead-end of a job as someone could get. Neji knew this, knew the family elders had given him the position for the sole reason of squashing his ambition without endless hours of menial tasks, reading and organizing reports, but he still did it gladly and without fail. Even if the job was thankless and took its toll on him physically and emotionally, Neji knew that by doing it, perhaps he could save a life, and that was enough motivation to keep him returning to his desk day after day.

After a few hours, Neji had all the reports organized except for the one that had come in the night before, which he figured could wait until the evening. He stood up, stretching a little, and moved to the door to find his raincoat and umbrella. He would have to leave now if he wanted to make the rehearsal on time.

Just as he was about to open the door, however, a sudden burst of power swept through him, stopping Neji cold. The surge was weak, as if a pulse of a strong aura had been given off a mile or so away and had lessened over distance, but it held the unmistakable tinge of shadows. It was gone as soon as it had come, but Neji didn't doubt this time that he had felt Shikamaru's distinct mark in the powerful energy.

 _What is he doing?_ Neji thought with sudden clarity, a cold hand gripping his heart. _What if someone else feels him, alive or dead? What if they come after him?_

But maybe, he realized with a strange sinking feeling in his stomach, that was the point.

Not knowing why he did it, Neji turned smartly on his heel and walked back to his computer, opening up the single remaining report and reading it. It was only one report, after all, and sometimes time could be of the essence in these cases. He opened it, quickly read it, and then filed it with all the other reports.

See. That was easy.

Still not feeling any better, however, Neji stood up and again walked to his door. He would be a couple of minutes late to the rehearsal, but he doubted anyone would mind much.


	6. Dawn and Afternoon

So this is definitely not a Sunday... whoops. I had the whole chapter written when I realized that I hadn't touched Kisame and Itachi in weeks and that I probably should, so I had to write another blurb that went first...

But it's here now, and another chapter will come next Sunday

Addi out!

* * *

When Itachi woke the next morning, his whole body was sore, but the first thing that went through his mind was: _so worth it._ Carefully, he stretched one arm at the shoulder, then the other, extending them above the nest of sheets and blankets he was curled up in and shivering as his bare skin came in contact with the chill air, before he rotated his upper torso to test the tension in his back.

Well, he'd had worse after-mornings.

The blankets at his back suddenly shifted, and a thick arm came around Itachi's waist, pulling him back to nestle against a warm, muscular chest. "Mn… stop wriggling, Itachi…"

Sighing a little with contentment, Itachi allowed Kisame to kidnap his body once more, letting his forehead fall forward until rested on Kisame's collarbone. "Good morning, Kisame. Oh, wait, is it morning? I can't tell."

Back at the hospital, Itachi had had a clock that had been specially made for him with auditory tones for each hour and fifteen minute, five minute, and one minute intervals, but without it or any other auditory clues of the breaking dawn, he had no idea whether it was morning or not.

"Go back to sleep, Itachi…" Kisame groaned, and Itachi could almost see the sleepily disgruntled expression on his face.

But Itachi would not be deterred in his mission. "Not until you tell me if it's morning or not," he announced, poking Kisame gently but forcefully in the chest.

"Alright, alright. Geez, how can you be so awake at this hour…?" There was a brief pause, as if Kisame was cracking his eyes open to gauge the amount of sunlight filtering into the room. "It's morning, but barely." The bed shifted slightly under Kisame's weight as he lifted his head a few inches off the pillow, then bounced again as he let it fall back down. "6:12. That morning enough for you?"

"Morning enough to wish you a good morning," Itachi concluded, reaching up to touch Kisame's face, his thumb resting on the side of his nose, and using that as a reference point to lean up and press a quick kiss to his lips. "Good morning, Kisame."

"Hmph." Slowly, the lips under Itachi's melted from a grumpy early-morning scowl to an indulgent smile. "I suppose it is, if I get a wakeup call like that."

"That's the spirit." Itachi pulled back a little and sighed again with contentment. "I don't ever want to leave," he confessed nestling closer to Kisame's side.

"We don't have to get up; not for a little while, anyway. It'll be nine or ten before they get here, so we have some time."

"That's not what I meant." Itachi let his hand ghost over Kisame's chest, trailing up his side before landing at his shoulder. "I don't want leave from here. Next to you. And not just because I feel like I need to repay you, or something like that. I just… want to stay with you. Forever."

"That's just the endorphins from finally being free talking," Kisame joked gently, smoothing Itachi's hair back from his forehead. "You'll get sick of me soon enough, and then you'll rue the fact that you bound yourself to me for the rest of your life."

"Hmmm… Somehow I doubt it." Itachi pushed his torso up from the bed, feeling the sheet travel down his back again, the chill air that replaced its warm presence sending a shiver down his spine. "When did you say the people were coming? Nine?"

"Yeah; what about it?"

"Then we should get up and ready." Gritting his teeth slightly at the soreness in his back, Itachi swung his legs over the side of the bed. Holy mother of ice cubes, was it cold. Itachi supposed this was what came of living in a carefully regulated environment for the past eight years.

Kisame gave an annoyed noise at the loss of contact and the sudden rush of cold air in its place. "Why? They won't be here for another three hours… Come back to bed, Itachi…"

"No," Itachi corrected, stretching his overused and abused muscles at the edge of the bed. "We only have a little less than three hours until they get here, max. If they're decent at their job, they'll get here earlier than that. These people are your men now, Kisame, whether you want to think of them that way or not, and that means you need to appear a certain way to them. People will follow anyone unwillingly, but for them to follow you willingly, you need respect, and there's two ways to get that: through love, and through fear. I'm assuming your father commanded that respect through fear, so they'll probably expect the same from you, and if you want to change that - or even if you don't - you'll need to start by making a good first impression today."

Stunned silence resounded from the bed. "Where did all that come from? Did you have some secret past as a mob boss that you haven't told me about?"

Itachi couldn't hide the small smile that stole across his lips from Kisame's hidden compliment. "Didn't you ever read Machiavelli in school? I was a medical student when I was incarcerated, but even I read his writings on whether it was better for a leader to be loved or feared. I also learned a lot of things about being a leader from my father. He was grooming me to be the next owner of the hospital, before…" He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.

"Before you were kept there as a patient instead," Kisame finished for him, reaching up to lay a warm hand on his shoulder, chasing away the residual chill of the cool morning air. "So, you know a lot about how to be a good leader?"

"Yeah," Itachi responded, turning his face downwards, towards his lap. "I was a good leader- or would have made one, at least… once upon a time. But the skills are still there."

"Really?" Kisame inched closer, pulling himself up so that he could cast an arm around Itachi's shoulders and fit his chest to the smaller back in front of him. "And do you intend to share said skills?"

"What, you didn't think that I was going to freeload off you for the rest of my life, did you, Kisame?" Itachi asked in mock horror. "Of course I'll help you! We are going to lead the best, most feared gang in the entire- wait, where are we going?"

"New York," Kisame said with a laugh, pressing a kiss to the side of Itachi's neck. "The gang's based in New York City."

"Then it'll be the best and most feared gang on de east side of de Mississippi," Itachi announced, adding in a little bit of an Italian accent at the end and earning a second chuckle from Kisame.

"I think you're a little too excited about this."

"Of course I'm excited! _Every_ little boy has a phase when he wants to be a badass Mafia boss like from the Godfather!"

"Hmm?" Kisame poked Itachi in the side none-too-gently. "You're going to be a badass Mafia boss?"

"No, _you're_ going to be the badass Mafia boss, and I'm going to be the one manipulating the whole scene from the shadows, so when the final Mafia boss is defeated in the video game, he jumps out and becomes the _final_ final boss and completely smashes the player, after which he precedes to rez the Mafia boss and start the whole cycle over again!"

"I'm confused as to whether you think we're in a movie or a video game, Itachi…"

"Both! Neither! Who cares!" Itachi turned around and poked Kisame's face cheekily, his own face stretched in a giddy grin. "It's insane to me that this is what I have to look forward to for the rest of my life! Meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me, hands down."

Kisame's hand on Itachi's shoulder tightened almost imperceptibly. "Even seeing your little brother again?"

The words gave Itachi pause, but not for long, and he shook his head to dispel the thoughts threatening to take over his brain. "Sasuke… I was happy to see him again, but our lives separated eight years ago. We can't ever go back to the way we were, no matter how much we want to. Too much time has passed…"

"Do you really think that? That's the truth?"

Itachi felt his shoulders hunch slightly, then the straightened them and forced his face upward. "Yes, that's what I really think. I have a new life now, and I would do it an injustice by dwelling on the past." He turned around with a smile and rested his hand on Kisame's arm. "Now, we have to get you up and presentable to make the best first impression you can on your new subordinates. You wouldn't happen to have a tie around here, would you?"

* * *

The Space Needle was the most iconic building in Seattle, surrounded by a sea of other iconic buildings and landmarks. Years - decades - ago, back when it had been built for the World's Fair in 1962, it had been an architectural wonder, a beacon of humankind's imagination and a testament to her ingenuity, and - briefly - the tallest building on the Pacific Northwest Coast. It had since been one-upped in height alone by several other buildings, including some in Seattle itself, but by virtue of its unique and unmistakable design, it still captured the minds and attentions of all who saw it.

The tall spire on top of the Space Needle - the "needle" itself - extends into the sky like a small child reaching for the unreachable stars; a remnant of the nation-wide interest in the sky from the space race. The metal rod, far above the surrounding buildings, embarks into a more turbulent layer of the atmosphere, buffeted by winds that don't dare dive too close to the ground for fear of retribution from the gentler winds that make the area their domain.

Perched on top of the needle like some kind of shadowy bird of prey, an eagle of the night, Shikamaru felt like a god surveying the domain given him to look after.

The sensation was addicting. Now Shikamaru could understand why people felt the urge to hurl themselves off the top of it.

As much as he enjoyed the giddying feeling of supremacy, however, it was getting a little too late for his tastes, and Shikamaru had a date to keep. It would be troublesome to call out whatever ghosts lived in the area, but even more troublesome to wait for them to come out on their own. Sighing, he stood up on the point of the Space Needle, balancing on the tip with one foot, and sent a blast of his aura rippling through the spectral plane on all sides of him.

Far away, a flock of birds on a rooftop took flight, scattering into the distant horizon.

Shikamaru settled his arms across his chest and turned his gaze downward, searching for a presence rising up to meet him. With a call like the one he'd given, he suspected he wouldn't have to wait long. If it had him who'd felt a blast like that, he would have viewed it as a challenge.

As the seconds ticked by and no one appeared in front of Shikamaru to challenge him, a frown tugged at the corners of his mouth. Had his call not been loud enough? He doubted it; it had probably been strong enough that Neji, over a mile away, could have felt it. Had he misinterpreted the figure's words? Again, it was unlikely; Shikamaru trusted his deductive logic more than any other skill he possessed. What, then? Why were the spirits at and around the Space Needle - and he knew they were there; he could feel their weak auras cringing away from his presence - flinching away from his call like frightened villagers in a poor town shying away from a totalitarian government's corrupt tax collector?

The answer, when Shikamaru stopped to think about it, was simple - that the ghost he had called was strong enough to frighten the general ghost population of the area, and, judging by the length of time it was taking them to respond to the challenge, they were planning on toying with him.

Well, that didn't bother Shikamaru. If that was the case, he would just have to fight back in the same manor with his greatest asset: his mind. Redoubling his concentration efforts, Shikamaru extended his rage of closely watched space further around him and downwards. Where would the challenged spirit come from? Directly below? Behind? Would they, instead, force Shikamaru to come to them?

As is often the case, even for a mind as sharp as Shikamaru's, it is impossible to predict and prepare for every single of an infinite many possibilities. As his attention was focused toward the ground, Shikamaru felt a sharp spike in spectral energy behind and directly above him racing towards him with impressive speed, then creating a physical force not unlike a hand at his back. The push was just enough to cause him to overbalance and pitch forward, his feet leaving the solid metal tip of the needle.

 _So this is what you planned…_ he thought almost disparagingly, turning his head slightly to gauge the distance between himself and his attacker before making his body instinctively corporeal and feeling gravity take over his suddenly heavy form. _You wanted to displace me from my perch to acclaim your own supremacy. Well, if that's the way you want to play…_

Quick as a striking snake, Shikamaru called up a lightning fast shadow and bound the hand that had pushed him to his own wrist. The last thing he saw before he plunged downwards was the shocked face of his assailant as she was pulled down after him in a free fall.

* * *

Neji walked into the rehearsal room just as everyone else was getting ready to play, some shuffling chairs and piling music onto stands while others blew air into their instruments to warm up before the rehearsal began. As he quietly slipped to the back to find the case for his tenor saxophone, hoping no one would notice his tardiness, he heard a loud voice shout his name from across the room.

"Neji! Glad you could join us today!"

 _So much for slipping in unnoticed._

"Hello, Konohamaru," Neji sighed as he opened his case and fished around for his reed, hoping he could quickly clamp it between his teeth before having to converse too much with his "friend".

Unfortunately, he had no such luck, and Konohamaru came over to lean against the wall with his trumpet, deliberately opening up his spit valve and blowing condensation from the inside of the instrument onto his case. "You don't normally make the afternoon rehearsals, Neji, just the evening ones every other week. What's the special occasion today?"

"I finished my work early," he responded tonelessly, fitting his saxophone together and fixing the harness strap that would assist in holding the heavy instrument up around his neck. "Thought I'd grace you with my presence today and add something constructive to the rehearsal, unlike some members who do nothing but goof off all the time, _Konohamaru._ "

Konohamaru made a _who, me?_ face and leaned closer to Neji. "Whatever, dude. Nice hair, by the way. It's nice to see you let go of the uber-gay style for your regular normal-amount-of gay one. What, was your boyfriend afraid you were going to show him up-?"

Moegi pushed Konohamaru out of the way, effectively silencing him. "Oh, quit it, Konohamaru. Leave Neji alone! You know he could probably have you killed in your sleep if you keep teasing him like that."

Snorting gently, Neji clamped his reed in between his teeth to soften it so he wouldn't have to answer, neither confirming nor denying it.

"Sheesh, Moegi, Neji knows I was just messing with him." He reached out to touch the top of Neji's head, but at a glare from his intended target, thought better of it and just gave him a thumbs up. "Right, Neji?"

Ignoring him once again, Neji picked up his saxophone and clipped it to the straps around his neck. From across the room, Asuma, the drummer for the jazz orchestra, tapped the cymbal a few times to get their attention.

"The day ain't getting any longer, guys! Let's get this rehearsal started!"

Quickly, Neji took his seat, Moegi following him to sit next to him and Konohamaru taking his seat in the back, having been banished from the front row since almost the first day of rehearsal years earlier. The song order for the day was written on a large whiteboard propped up at the front of the room, and Neji hastily shuffled his music in the right order as Kurenai, the keyboardist, played a few notes for everyone to tune, then Asuma hit out a steady beat.

"Everyone ready? One, two, three!"

* * *

The wind from the fall rushed past Shikamaru's ears, deafening him to any cries his former-assailant/now-captive may or may not have made. He was content to let gravity take control of his body, confident in his ability to make himself incorporeal just before impact, thus avoiding the pain of colliding against the ground, but he suspected that the ghost now bound to him - the former "jumper" - having already felt the pain of smashing against hard, unforgiving concrete once before, would be more leery of experiencing it again, corporeal or not. But since Shikamaru refused to stop his own fall himself, the jumper would have to stop his momentum in addition to her own if she didn't want to be dragged down after him.

Numbers quickly flashed through Shikamaru's mind, calculating values at an astounding rate. Since the Space Needle is 184 meters tall, the average acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared, and the terminal velocity of the average human body in free fall is approximately 53 meters per second, using the laws of kinematics, terminal velocity will be reached in approximately five and a half seconds at 143 meters from the top, or approximately three quarters of the way down the tower. Factoring that into account and then using 53 meters per second as the velocity for the rest of the fall, Shikamaru would hit the bottom in approximately…

Three...

Two…

On-

Just before Shikamaru would have let go of his corporeality on his own to avoid hurting himself on the ground, he felt the shadow handcuff binding him to the jumper suddenly tense upwards, bringing him to an abrupt, almost painful halt. Casting a quick glance downwards, he saw that they were hovering about twenty feet above the ground, and a tiny wave of self-directed irritation swept through him. He'd estimated that they'd be a little closer to the ground, between five and ten feet, but he supposed he couldn't be too put out about it. For lightening fast algebraic calculations done in his head, the margin of error wasn't that bad.

Turning his face upwards, he cast a smirk at the woman who had caught him, releasing his corporeality so that his weight was no longer dragging her arm down.

"Thanks for the hand," he remarked dispassionately, floating up to stand in the air directly in front of her and locking her surprised eyes with his own iron solid gaze. "I apologize for the unorthodox way of calling you here, but I wanted to ask you a few questions."

* * *

"Alright, I think that was the last one. Good work today, everyone!" Kurenai called from the rhythm section, unplugging her electric keyboard from the wall. "Remember to put next Saturday's gig on your calendars, and _don't be late!_ Otherwise have a good rest of your week and weekend, and I'll see you all here again next week."

Neji nodded at the woman's words, though he knew she wasn't looking at him. Everyone else in the orchestra understood his situation of not always being able to come to rehearsals because of his family because they were often in the same position, but with work, but he always tried to make every gig they played at, no matter the excuse he had to make for the elders. The most daring one was begging off of a reunion on the excuse of an imaginary cold so he could play at a free concert they did at the behest of a charity organization that put on different kind of enrichment programs for students in public education schools.

During the rehearsal, his phone, which he always kept on his stand next to his music, buzzed several times, but only with a text from Sasuke that he hadn't bothered to read fully and a few more work emails, so Neji hadn't bothered to check them at the time. After returning his saxophone to the case, he leaned against the wall and opened the text from Sasuke.

 _Sorry again about calling you last night when I was upset. I've calmed down a lot since then, so thank you for listening to me. Apparently the police put together evidence that Itachi was assisted in his escape by the man Father had hired to be his nurse, Kisame. Seems crazy, right? I met him briefly when I went to visit Itachi, and he looked alright to me, if a little unsuited to his occupation. I swear the guy had muscles on top of his muscles. All I can think about, though, is what a man like that could stand to gain by pulling a ridiculous stunt like that. He's a wanted man now, and I doubt he wouldn't think something like that through._

 _Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I'm better now, and it looks like Father no longer suspects me because I was the last one to see him before he vanished. Father's got the police on high alert, but they think it's highly likely that they're out of the city by now. They got visual confirmation on a car heading south, so the police think they're heading for the Mexican border, maybe. Honestly, I kind of hope they are. I was disappointed at first because I wouldn't be able to see Itachi again, but now I think I'm at least a little glad he's free, if that's what he wants. I just wish I could have gotten the chance to give him a proper goodbye._

 _Sorry again for dumping all this on you. Hope your life is a little less hectic than mine right now, and remember, you get a free panic call to me now that I hit you up. It's only fair._

Neji snorted through his nose disbelievingly. If only the only thing he had to deal with was a missing brother. His problems included a cousin, an uncle, and a phantom. He quickly typed a message back to Sasuke.

 _I already said not to worry about it. Do some thinking about everything you're feeling. I'm serious; you'll feel better after you figure out all your emotions. Trust me on this; I know from experience._

He briefly debated whether to tell Sasuke about Shikamaru's sudden reappearance in his life, but decided against it in the end. There were some things that should be kept private.

 _I doubt I'll be using the "panic call" anytime soon, but thanks anyway,_ he closed with instead. _Hinata says hi._

Neji really had no way of knowing if Hinata would have thought to say hi to Sasuke, but she had asked about him once or twice in the past week, so he figured it was safe enough to include it.

Just as he hit the send button, Neji felt a bump against his shoulder and looked down to find Moegi standing next to him, rising up on her tiptoes and trying to crane her neck and see what he had been typing. Flushing slightly at being caught, she settled back down on her heels and flashed him an embarrassed smile.

"Who are you texting?"

"His boyfriend!" Konohamaru called from across the room before Neji got the chance to answer the question. "Isn't that right, Neji?"

If it had been a glass in Neji's hand instead of a phone in a protective case, it was likely that it would shattered in his tightening grip. Usually he had a pretty high threshold for Konohamaru's tasteless gay jokes that undermined his (potential) sexuality, but with the events of the day before and last night's particularly vivid dream (and, who was he kidding, everything he had done and thought for the two weeks in Konoha and the week since coming back home), they were starting to hit home more and more, and that was irritating him.

Before he could jump in and give Konohamaru a verbal lashing - or maybe just punch him; ooh, that would feel good - a red blur formed in front of Neji's vision, and he blinked as he realized that it was Moegi, having jumped in front of him with her finger threateningly outstretched.

"Quit it, Konohamaru!" She bellowed, pointing menacingly at him. "You have a maximum quota of one potentially homophobic joke per chapter, and you've already used yours for this one! Leave Neji alone!"

"Homophobic?!" Konohamaru asked incredulously, placing a hand over his heart in mock hurt. "I'm pained that you think so little of my moral character that you would think I could even consider something so callus! It doesn't really bother Neji, does it, Neji? You wouldn't deprive me of my harmless little attempts at comic relief, now would you, Neji? After all, they are my only redeeming reasons for existing in this story."

Taking a deep breath and forcing it out slowly through his nose, Neji forced his fist on his phone to loosen its death grip. Very deliberately, he said, "The first time you pulled that stunt, it was barely passably funny, and now that the joke has dragged on this long, it has degraded into an unfunny gag that amuses nobody but yourself, and certainly not the people reading this for "entertainment". So, Konohamaru, at least for the sake of your audience, if nothing else, please just stop." Both Konohamaru and Moegi stared at him open-mouthed as he finished, and Neji allowed a small smirk to creep across his lips. It felt good to know that he still had the ability to make _some_ people speechless. "Also, I could just fuck you up. So cut the shit, Konohamaru. Or next time, I won't ignore your tasteless comments like I have in past."

The ringer on Neji's phone went off, and he cast a quick glance at in the face of his dumbfounded friends' faces. "I have to take this; it's work. See you all next week."

And with that, he turned on his heel strode out of the room without even pausing to put on his raincoat, leaving behind a stupefied Konohamaru and an almost-as-stupefied Moegi staring after him as if he'd sprouted an extra head. Across the room, Asuma cracked up from where he was pulling away his drum set, laughing so hard that he almost dropped a cymbal on the floor.

"Man, did he get you good! I told you that if you kept pushing his buttons, that kid would explode in your face someday! He's a ticking time bomb who resets his timer every ten seconds just for the hell of it."

But neither Moegi nor Konohamaru were paying much attention to him. Instead, their minds were occupied by something far more intriguing.

"Neji swore…" Moegi whispered, the syllables rolling slowly off her tongue, as if it was relearning how to form them. "A fuck _and_ a shit…. Neji _never_ swears…"

"Is it just me, or did Neji's touchiness on a joke that I've been playing off - for years! - just escalate exponentially, and for no apparent reason?" Konohamaru asked once his mouth managed to hinge itself back into working order and recover enough to make coherent sounds. "Please tell me you saw it too and that wasn't just a lack-of-sleep induced hallucination."

"It's not just you; I saw it too," Moegi confirmed, a calculating gleam creeping into her eyes. "But what might have caused this sudden rise in said touchiness, and for that… _particular_ subject? What do you say we have ourselves a little… investigation?"


	7. Stay the Night

And Addi is back, baby!

Whew! I can't believe I churned this bad boy out only in four days. It's a big one! And yeah, Monday still isn't Sunday, but it's a lot closer than Thursday, so I count that as a win.

Also, lime ahead! You have been warned.

Addi out!

* * *

Neji was already sitting in the middle of his bedroom floor in his ridiculous old-fashioned pajamas when Shikamaru ghosted through the wall, his tattered army coat flapping after him in a nonexistent breeze, waiting for him behind a chess board with a rather sour expression.

"You're late," he said crossly, his gaze flicking down impatiently to the board in front of him as if to accent the single white pawn that had moved forward.

"Only by two and a half minutes," Shikamaru scoffed gently, settling down lightly on the opposite side of the chessboard. "Why, a watch wound slightly different might be less accurate than that."

"Nobody uses watches that wind up anymore, Shikamaru. Nowadays, everything is digital, and everyone's phone shows the same time, no matter how much they charge it." He jerked his chin at the chessboard. "Your move."

Letting his hand drift over the heads of the black pieces arrayed before him like the legion platoons of an army, Shikamaru allowed his head to fall forward to hide the smile on his lips as he finally selected a pawn and slid it forward two spaces. "Not if you change it manually, Neji."

"But you can also manually change the time on an analogue watch as well, so that would apply to your argument too." Neji picked up a knight and set it down again in a different position, the sharp click of the plastic base against the wooden board ricocheting off the walls of the room like an angrily misfired bullet. "This conversation is getting us nowhere, Shikamaru. Where were you this afternoon? And what was with that pulse of spectral energy I felt earlier?"

Shikamaru smiled blandly at him, hiding his purpose behind a mask of amusement. "What pulse?"

"Nevermind," Neji said with a sigh, deflating slightly as he pushed another piece forward. "I knew you wouldn't admit to it, anyways. But just know that you're not fooling anyone, Shikamaru. I've grown accustomed enough to your aura to be able to recognize a blast of that magnitude, even as far away as it was. What was going on? Did you pick a fight with every local draugr that flies under our radar at the same time, or what?"

This time, the grin that stretched Shikamaru's face was a true smile of amusement, and not a mask. "Something like that."

 _Shikamaru smiled disarmingly at the woman in front of him, her wrist still bound to his with a shackle made of shadow. She was plain but not unpretty, her face clean of makeup and blemishes, and her hair, long and brown, billowing around her head in sleek waves as if it was still acting out the final memories of her body as it fell from the tower. The color, darker than a dirty blond but not quite as dark as the rich tones of a nutrient-rich loam, reminded him strangly, of Neji's hair; if one looked closer, the texture looked similar, as well._

 _He was broken out of his musings by a sharp tug on the shadow cuff linking their two wrists. "What do you want with me? Let go!" She shouted furiously as she gave another, harder, tug, her fervent eyes catching his attention with their blatant hatred and beautiful color._

 _A color so unique, he'd only seen it twice before: in Neji's eyes, and in the eyes of his younger cousin, Hinata._

" _You're a Hyuuga," he exclaimed, forgetting for a moment his agenda at the thought._

 _The woman's pale eyes, the same telltale sign that had given her identity away, narrowed at Shikamaru's exclamation, her suspicion visibly escalating. "How do you recognize my clan, rouge draugr? Be quick about the answer, or I will expel you from this city by force."_

" _Rogue draugr? I am offended by your unjust classification, ma'am. I am, in fact, a phantom, and your eyes unmistakably brand you as a Hyuuga. I am intimately familiar with another of your family, and so could not help but make the logical conclusion that you must have been one as well."_

" _Phantom…?" If possible, the woman's eyes narrowed even further. "If a phantom of your level has been in this city for long enough to be as old as you are, I would have found you before now. Why are you here, and why do you claim intimacy with the Hyuuga clan?"_

" _Why, I'm here for a polite little chat!" Shikamaru exclaimed, holding his arms out wide, charm oozing from his very pores. The shackle forced her to mirror the movement, drawing out her arm from her side. "And as for my Hyuuga friend…" His polite demeanor disappeared, leaving behind only a ruthless coldness in his eyes. "Well, I don't see how that's any business of yours, considering that you're dead… and he's still alive."_

" _Still alive…?" The woman's eyes abruptly widened, and she tugged vainly against the shadow holding her captive. "Let me go, you damn liar!"_

" _Liar?" Suddenly, Shikamaru's polite facade was back, and he sent a winning smile in the direction of the woman. "Why, you wound me again! Everything I've told you today has been the truth! I'm friends with a Hyuuga boy, I'm just here for a little chat, and I'm nothing more than a phantom who's wandered a little far from home."_

" _That, by definition, is impossible," the woman snapped back, but Shikamaru gainsayed her with a guileless expression._

" _Nothing is, by definition, impossible, ma'am," he said politely, bowing his head forward slightly. "Besides, I believe it's the heart, the intention and emotion behind something, that matters most, not the physical form. Don't you agree?"_

" _Ha!" The woman scoffed, looking his attire up and down distastefully. "What would a country hick like you know about impossibilities or intention? I'll admit, you have some raw power, but you're just a kid who bit off more than he could chew by walking into a situation he had no control over."_

 _With a sigh, Shikamaru turned his face upwards, towards the sky. The clouds covered the whole expanse from horizon to horizon like a thick grey blanket, hiding the blue beyond. All in all, Seattle had horrible whether for cloud-gazing. "You know," he remarked almost to himself without giving the woman in front of him a single glance, "sometimes I wonder why I get so disappointed when I set people up to underestimate me, and they fall beautifully into my trap. It's almost not fair. I mean, with it being me, and all."_

" _What are you blathering on about?" The woman sneered testily, yanking her trapped wrist one more time in an attempt to free it from the shadows that bound it. "Let go of me, you freak, or I'll give you such a beating you'll wish you'd never challenged me- or made it up here in the first place!"_

 _Instead of responding, Shikamaru just let his gaze fall down from the sky and gave a silent command to the shadow binding their wrists together, causing it to flare up like black flames and cover his whole body, hiding the shabby cut-off jeans and ratty t-shirt he had purposefully donned earlier. The last thing he saw before the wave of shadow washed over his face, blocking out the sight of the world around him, was the sudden terror growing on the woman's face as she redoubled her efforts to pull free, but in vain._

 _As the shadows swirled around Shikamaru, he felt himself growing taller, aging about five years. The face he planned on showing the woman was not the face he had worn when he had died, but it wasn't from too far off, after joining the army but before the lines of worry and stress had been permanently etched into his once-soft face. The shadows gave one final swirl around him before they dissipated like a dark mist, taking with them the shackle that he had used to bind the woman's wrist with his own, but not before causing the tattered army jacket he now wore to flare out behind him as if in the passing of a dramatic wind._

" _Allow me to restate myself in a manner more befitting to the situation, ma'am," he said cordially but coldly, all trace of the politely goofy personality he had worn before gone. "My name is Shikamaru Nara. I came from far away, and I'll be staying in your city for a while. I do not wish to fight you for dominance, nor do I seek to stay for any great length of time. My visit to your territory is only temporary, but as it may be a longer temporary than I first anticipated, I thought I would at least announce my presence and intention so as to avoid any… misunderstandings. Have I made myself perfectly clear?"_

" _Crystal." The woman's pale eyes had hardened to diamond-like clarity. "You do not wish to be bothered, nor upset the system already in place. I respect your intentions and power, self-proclaimed phantom. However, even the presence of an aura such as yours could cause disruptions to my peaceful society, especially since you have the look about you of one who has lived as a ghost long enough to have little concept of the passing of time in a human frame. Therefore, I must ask you: how long is this 'temporary' you speak of? Long enough to watch the rains fall tonight… or long enough to count the passing seasons?"_

" _Ha… I wonder…" Shikamaru once again allowed his gaze to drift towards the sky, taking in the clouds, full to bursting with unwept tears. It had stopped raining a little over an hour ago, but it looked like it might start up again soon. "I am sorry, but I have no concrete answer to your question. If I must say something… I believe I will be here until he sends me away."_

"' _He?'" The woman asked sharply, her tone forcing Shikamaru's gaze down from the sky again. "Are you referring to your so-called Hyuuga friend?"_

 _Shikamaru allowed the tiniest of indulgent smiles to slip through his mask for a fraction of a second, but from the shock on the woman's face, he knew that she had seen it. "There's nothing so-called about it, ma'am. He is a Hyuuga, and he is also my friend. In all the strange friendships I've seen across my lifetime, it's not one of the strangest."_

" _From your point of view. From where I stand, it's unthinkable."_

 _His eyelashes fluttering downwards in a single, solid blink was the only sign Shikamaru allowed himself to give of his surprise. "And why is that."_

 _The woman angrily drew herself back and floated upwards several feet, forcing Shikamaru to crane his neck back to see her face and her cold expression. "Because the clan of Hyuuga is like its own country with its own rules that apply to no one but them, and they punish rule-breakers with more ferocity and vindication then I've ever seen given to those who commit treason against their mother nation."_

 _The information was shocking, but Shikamaru had suspected something similar, so he hid his emotions well. "And I'm guessing befriending a ghost is against one of those rules you mentioned that apply only to them?"_

" _Precisely." The woman extended a finger down to point at him warningly. "I don't know if you're lying or not about knowing a live Hyuuga, but if you are telling the truth, I would advise both you and him to be careful. If the elders find out about it, they'll punish him severely- and one of the most severe punishments out of the plethora that will be heaped on him will be to watch and they end you."_

Interesting… _Shikamaru mentally filed away the information in a mental drawer marked Neji's Persona Hypothesis. "The elders?" He probed carefully, hoping to get a little more information out of her._

 _Unfortunately, she shook her head, obviously unwilling to divulge any more information. "They're none of your business, shadow-brat. Keep away from them if you want to keep on existing as you are now, and I'd advise you to tell that stupid kid the same- or, better yet, stay away from him if you don't want either of you to get hurt. The Hyuuga family has a habit of taking people and molding them into unfeeling lumps of clay with a set of strict morals which mostly include doing as they're told, as long as they're told it will benefit the family."_

" _So I've gathered…" Shikamaru muttered under his breath, but the woman caught the words._

" _You think this is a joke?" She asked him angrily, swooping towards him to stab a finger in the center of his chest. "You think you can just waltz in a mess with a centuries-old bloodline with centuries-old traditions upheld by centuries-old members? Because, if you do, you've got another thing coming. Even I couldn't escape their boney old clutches, not when I was alive. The only thing I was ever able to do to defy them was become a ghost when I died and stay up here, looking out for the ghosts across the city that mean no harm to anyone or anything. But even now, I'm powerless to go against them. If they ever found me here, they'd destroy me before I'd even have the chance to ask why."_

 _Quietly, Shikamaru asked, "Is that why you jumped, then? Because you thought there was no way to escape, except in death?"_

" _Jumped…?" The ridge between the woman's eyebrows furrowed for a second before smoothing out again. "Ah, I see… Well, since you've broken my boredom of eternity hiding away atop a tourist trap for at least one afternoon, I don't see why I shouldn't let you in on a little secret…"_

 _Suddenly, the woman's accusing finger stabbing into Shikamaru's chest turned into a fist grasping hold of his collar and pulling him forward, dragging his face towards hers so that she could put her lips directly against his ear and whisper a bone-chilling truth that, for the first time since he'd confronted her, shocked him to the core. As he stood in mid air, frozen from the chilling words that she had whispered to him, the woman drew back and gave him a true smile, though a sad one._

" _Goodbye, shadow-brat. Don't meddle in the affairs of the Hyuugas, for your sake, or the sake of your friend. But if you do see him again, don't tell him you met me, okay? I can't have rumor of my existance getting around to the elders."_

"That's not an answer, Shikamaru," Neji said testily, bringing Shikamaru's attention back to the present. "It's either yes or no, not just 'something like that!' What's with you today?"

"What's with you today?" Shikamaru retorted, sending a bishop diagonally forward with a flick of his finger. "You're not usually so… let's say… _waspish._ Something happen today to ruffle your feathers the wrong way?"

Like Shikamaru expected he would, Neji turned a light shade of pink and quickly refocused his gaze on the chessboard. "N-no, nothing happened."

 _Liar._ But Shikamaru didn't push the matter; he had already guessed the gist of the inciting incident - whatever it was - from the timing and depth of Neji's blush. Instead, he simply pushed another piece forward and answered one of Neji's earlier questions. "I figured that if I was going to be staying around here awhile, I might want to introduce myself to some of the local ghosts- just so they don't suddenly take a disliking to me for walking in on their territory, you know. Just a good, old-fashioned friendly meet-and-greet."

"And the blast of power; was that part of your 'friendly meet-and-greet' as well?"

The smallest hint of a smirk curled up the corner of Shikamaru's lip. "A little intimidation never hurt anyone, Neji, especially if you want to get something done."

"Hmph." Neji gave a delicate sniff and pushed a rook forward, capturing the bishop Shikamaru had just moved. "As if you need any more intimidation than your shadows."

The smirk disappeared from Shikamaru's face. "...I don't like to use them more often than I have to. They drain energy fast, and I prefer to keep them as an ace I never have to use."

"You use them all the time when you're with me," Neji countered softly, looking purposefully at the arm Shikamaru had extended to make his next move. Following Neji's gaze, Shikamaru found a shadow wrapped around his forearm like an obedient snake, writhing gently against his skin.

He hadn't even noticed it was there. A tiny crease between his eyebrows the only outward indication of his inner frown, Shikamaru tried to dismiss the shadow from his body. It writhed as if in agony at the order for a few seconds before it dissipated into an insubstantial black mist that was reabsorbed into his body.

This… could turn problematic. The reason that Shikamaru had hidden this power from his friend - and refused to use it for decades - was that the more he used it, the more he would unconsciously rely on it, and the more he relied on it, the stronger it would become. When he was alive, he and his shadows had lived in a delicate balance of power that could tip to one side or the other without notice, but he'd changed that by locking them up shortly after he'd died. Now, though, that he'd showed Neji and everyone else his powers, there was no longer a reason to hide them, so he'd started to call the shadows out regularly again. How often had he purposefully used them in the past week? He suddenly wondered, feeling the beginnings of nervousness start to creep into his mind. And how many times had he been surrounded by shadows that he hadn't called out.

Firmly, Shikamaru gave his head a slight shake and put the thought into another drawer in his mind marked "Sort Out Later". He had dealt with his shadows before, and would again. They were as much a part of him as his right arm, and he could control them. Would control them. Without a doubt.

Flashing a reassuring smile at Neji, Shikamaru said, "Perhaps they just like you. They wouldn't easily forget the person they were first called upon to protect after decades of being locked up, after all."

"You speak about them as if they have personalities," Neji pointed out, one eyebrow raised. "And besides, you bound Naruto that time, not me."

"I said protect, not strangle." Shikamaru allowed the barest hint of an amused glimmer to show in his eyes. "And you'd be surprised by how much they actually decide on their own."

Neji gave a short laugh at that, his eyes lighting up momentarily, but his mirth was soon overtaken by worry again. "Just… be careful, okay, Shikamaru? Don't pull any stunts like the one you did today again. You're lucky I was the only one who felt your aura, or you'd be hunted out as soon as tomorrow morning. Seattle's a different place than Konoha… the Hyuuga family keeps a tight reign on it."

"What kind of tight reign?" Shikamaru asked carefully, his mind still full of the things the Hyuuga ghost woman had told him this afternoon. It was obvious that they held a substantial amount of power around the city, particularly the 'elders' she had spoken of, but what kind of power exactly?

Neji bit his bottom lip as if debating with himself how much he was going to tell Shikamaru, then released it with a sigh. "This is all confidential, and I can't tell you much… but the Hyuuga way is to try to stop problems before they become problems. Part of that is forcing powerful ghosts to fade, whether they're ready or not. Oftentimes, if a ghost with the potential to become a problem is discovered, they're given less than a week to fade before the SWAT team is called in."

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow to cover up how much the information actually disturbed him. "SWAT team?"

"The Uchihas," Neji clarified, his intertwined hands in his lap tightening just slightly. "Sasuke doesn't really know because he's still too young, but the Hyuuga and Uchiha families work together to balance the power of the spectral plane with the mortal one over the entire country. The Hyuugas are the watchdogs… and the Uchihas are the exterminators. Every day across the country, branches of the two families hunt down high-level ghosts - ghosts like the Akatsuki, Naruto, and you, Shikamaru - and either force them to fade or end their existence another way. It's not pretty, but it's pragmatic and sometimes, it's the only way to protect ourselves."

"And is that what you believe, or what you've been told to believe?"

Neji's eyes narrowed. "That's a dangerous question we don't ever ask. Not if we don't want to lose something important to us. In my case, that would be Hinata. So please don't ask, Shikamaru. Not that question."

Bowing his head slightly in agreement, Shikamaru said, "Note taken. No more questions." Then his mouth twisted slightly as an ugly feeling of jealousy welled up inside him, and he moved a pawn forward with unprecedented venom. "Hinata, huh?"

"Hinata is my cousin and my responsibility," Neji said in a warning tone even icier than the one he had used before. "I'm protecting her so she won't have to suffer some of the things I had to, or barring that, at least won't have to suffer them alone. It's a protective instinct, Shikamaru- something I doubt you've ever had the occasion to feel."

"A protective instinct… no, I haven't felt one of those in a while. At least, not since Lee joined us back in Konoha… but he can take care of himself now, going up against ferocious draugrs and the like." Shikamaru pushed another pawn forward but didn't let go of the piece, unconsciously rethinking his strategy. "I guess death takes that out of you. I mean, once you're dead, it's not like you have any friends to care about."

"That's not what I meant, Shikamaru-"

"I know," Shikamaru answered softly, releasing the pawn's head. "Check."

Neji's eyebrows crept upwards. "Even when I've upset you, I still can't beat you on purpose." Then he looked down at the board, and frowned. "Um, where? That pawn isn't anywhere near my king."

"Apparently you're upset, too," Shikamaru teased pointedly, leaning back with a superior expression. "The man I first played against would never have missed something this easy."

"Yeah, rub it in," Neji snapped, his eyes quickly racking the chessboard to find the check.

Taking pity on him, Shikamaru leaned forward again. "The queen, Neji. The pawn was blocking her path, but now she's got a straight shot to the king."

"Damn!" Neji cursed when he saw it, quickly moving his king backwards to hide behind the protection of a knight.

Unperturbed, Shikamaru shifted a bishop forward and took the knight, not quite forcing the king into another check but still letting Neji sweat a little. "What's wrong, Neji?" He asked teasingly, trailing his finger away from the bishop's head in a smooth, sensual movement. "You're playing worse than usual today."

Again, that infernal blush rose up over Neji's cheeks, and he looked pointedly down at the chessboard. "N-nothing happened last night. So get your stupid head out of the gutter."

A grin slipped slyly over Shikamaru's face at the confession Neji likely didn't know he'd made yet. "Last night? I don't remember saying anything about last night… or gutters, though they're strangely clean over here in west coast cities."

Neji's jaw dropped and his mouth opened and shut a few times without making a sound, letting Shikamaru know that Neji had realized the magnitude of his admission, and that he was absolutely right in his deductions. Ah, he loved it when he was right. Allowing his grin to escalate into a knowing smirk, Shikamaru leaned further over the game board so his face was only a few inches away from Neji's.

"So, last night, huh? After I left? What happened then, Neji?"

"N-nothing!" Neji stammered again, but more emphatically. "I called Sasuke and then went to bed! Nothing else happened!"

"Oh, but that's not exactly right…" Shikamaru murmured gently, as one would do to a small animal they were afraid of frightening away. "You realized something last night, didn't you? Something that scared you, but also… made you excited, dare I even say… _aroused_ you?"

He wasn't bluffing; he had seen it in Neji's eyes, the moment when he had realized that they weren't playing a game anymore, that Shikamaru had stepped away from his crutch of rules and begun to play for keeps. The question that remained, however, was if Neji would be willing to do the same. His lips parting slightly, Shikamaru raised himself up onto his knees and leaned completely over the chessboard, resting his hands against the floor. Neji leaned away from his oncoming form, but didn't scuttle away like he had last night. That, at least, was promising.

"Well, Neji?" He almost purred, his eyes dropping down to a seductive half mast. "Your move…"

In more ways than one.

Neji locked gazes with Shikamaru for a few seconds, then something in his pale eyes hardened as he made a decision. He reached for the board underneath Shikamaru and moved a piece, then, instead of withdrawing his hand, he trailed it up Shikamaru's arm to his neck, which he grabbed in a vice grip as he leaned forward and kissed him. It was chaste but forceful, like Neji was daring him right back, and when he pulled away, there was a new fire in his gaze.

"Your move," he taunted back, slightly out of breath.

Without a word, Shikamaru pulled back and swept the unfinished game of chess to the side with enough force to topple most of the pieces over and displace them from their squares. Shocked, Neji stuttered, "But- But- we weren't finished with the game! You always finish the game-"

"I think we're done with games now, Neji," Shikamaru whispered heatedly, feeling another shadow crawl down his arm but not caring enough to dismiss it. "Besides, I would have won within five moves anyway."

"C-cocky bastard," Neji managed to say, but it was the only thing he could get out before Shikamaru wrapped his arms around his neck and pulled him closer, crushing their mouths together.

This time, Shikamaru didn't bother with chasteness and pried Neji's mouth open with his tongue as soon as their lips touched, swiftly darting forward to taste the inside of his mouth. He wasn't sure whether to be disappointed or relieved when Neji reached up and pulled him closer instead of pushing him away, allowing him complete control over the kiss. A little frustrated, Shikamaru growled into Neji's mouth and their teeth banged together with the force with which Neji responded, throwing himself upwards with unprecedented zeal and thrusting his own tongue into Shikamaru's mouth in response, exploring him just as thoroughly as he'd been explored. Shikamaru allowed him for several moments, firmly reminding himself of the promise he'd made to himself that he would not make Neji fight against him for his own enjoyment, before pulling back again. Their tongues were the last thing that lost contact, and when Shikamaru looked down, he saw that Neji was panting and his cheeks were bright red.

"Your… your move now," he parroted back at Neji, surprised at how out of breath he was as well.

Instead of answering him with another kiss, as Shikamaru had expected him too, Neji reached behind himself and pulled his hair from the loose ponytail he always wore bundled near the ends of his hair, sifting his finger through the strands to make them settle softly about his shoulders like a dark halo. After his hair had finished settling around his shoulder, he trailed that same hand down his chest and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his pajamas, pushing the fabric aside to reveal the ridge of his collarbone standing out starkly against his neck.

"...I had a dream last night," Neji admitted, lowering his eyelashes so his gaze didn't meet Shikamaru's. "That you came back, and stayed the night…"

"And then what happened?" Shikamaru asked breathlessly, his eyes glued to Neji's nervous but aroused face.

"Well, after the whole whale incident…"

"...I'm not sure I even want to know what that means…"

"You.. um… kinda… well, you did… and then we… uh… damn it, I can't think of a good enough euphemism!"

Shikamaru couldn't help but chuckle at the cute mixture of anger and blatant need on Neji's face. "It's okay, Neji; I think I get where you're going. So, is it my turn now?"

Neji nodded quickly, clearly happy to be taken out of the limelight. His relieved expression melted away somewhat, however, when Shikamaru picked him up and started walking towards the bed.

"What are you doing?!"

"Relax; we're not going far," Shikamaru whispered into Neji's ear, stopping his squirming until he dropped him on the bed.

The mattress was springy, causing Neji to bounce slightly when Shikamaru released him, the shock on his face evident as Shikamaru sat down on the edge of the bed next to him.

"My question still stands, Shikamaru!" He said emphatically, his eyes wide. "What are you doing?"

"Well, you didn't think you could tell me something like _that_ and I wasn't going to ravish you, did you? Because that is certainly not happening." Shikamaru heard the sharp intake of breath from Neji, and allowed a devious smile to spread across his face. "You're lucky you still have your clothes on, after you started stripping in front of me earlier."

"I wasn't stripping-" Neji tried to say, sitting up to get better leverage, but Shikamaru leaned forward and grabbed a handful of his hair, pulling him in close and effectively ending his brief protest.

"It's my turn right now," Shikamaru reminded him, and Neji nodded eagerly with wide eyes before Shikamaru reeled him in by his hair and kissed him again.

The pajama shirt really was useless, Shikamaru decided when the enlarged neck hole slipped off Neji's shoulder, especially now that the nights were warm, so he trailed his hand down Neji's chest, unbuttoning the buttons as he went with telekinesis. When he reached the last button, he moved to take the shirt off of Neji, but stopped short when Neji grabbed his hand and instead brought it lower, to brush against the front of his pajama bottoms.

Correction: the bulge in front of his pajama bottoms.

Neji's whole body trembled at Shikamaru's touch, thrumming with repressed energy. He was already more than half hard, Shikamaru realized, and getting more so by the second. He flicked a glance up to Neji's face only to find that he wasn't even looking at him; his head was tilted back, his upper body held barely six inches off the mattress by his elbows propped underneath him, and his hair was flowing down to touch the comforter atop the bed like a sensual waterfall. Unable to stop himself, Shikamaru gave Neji a light squeeze, fascinated by the way his body responded, arching delicately off the mattress and pressing into his hand.

If Shikamaru was honest with himself, this whole situation was… kind of perfect. Almost too perfect. When he'd set out to make Neji his opponent almost three weeks ago, he'd been prompted by boredom and a desire to learn more about him, but that had slowly morphed into genuine attachment, and then non-so-slowly into lust. He'd figured that Neji was too straight-laced to ever let him do anything like this to him, especially considering his reaction the first time he'd kissed him, but here they were. Shikamaru was no stranger to this kind of thing - when he had been deployed overseas for months at a time, sometimes hormones got the better of someone, and he'd done things he certainly hadn't been proud of at the time - but he was sure that Neji had never allowed anyone else to touch him like this before. Why Shikamaru, then, and why now? Was it availability, or actual emotion?

"Nh… Shika… maru…"

Well, whatever the answer to that question may be, Shikamaru decided he didn't need it right then and there. Neji let his head drop forward, his hair sliding around his face like a curtain and cutting it off from the outside world. Tenderly, Shikamaru reached up with his unoccupied hand and took hold of the back of Neji's neck, guiding him down for a gentler kiss as his other hand crept below the waistline of his pajama pants.

"Mn!"

Neji started and made a soft cry at the sudden contact, but Shikamaru swallowed the sounds into his own mouth as he slowly pulled Neji's waistband down to expose his throbbing erection to the night air.

Breaking away from Neji's mouth, Shikamaru whispered, "Someone's eager…"

"Yeah, yeah," Neji muttered back, glaring at him. "Keep it up and you'll- ahh!"

His voice quickly turned from words into incomprehensible noises as Shikamaru gave an experimental rub down his length, his whole body starting to shake again. Grinning like a cat who had gotten lucky with a bird falling asleep directly in front of his nose, Shikamaru gave a slightly harder rub and asked, "I'll what, Neji?"

"Fuck… you… Shika… maru…" Neji gasped out, throwing his head back a second time and giving Shikamaru an exquisite view of a pale, supple neck that drew his eyes upwards.

"What, is that on the cards?" He teased gently as he leaned upwards, his lips almost brushing against the skin of Neji's neck. At the same time, he kept his hand making slow and steady motions up and down Neji's length, robbing him of the ability to answer as he closed the remaining distance between his lips and Neji's neck, pressing a light kiss against his skin.

Neji immediately tilted his head to the side to allow Shikamaru better access to his neck, sending a jolt of surprised pleasure down his spine. Well, with an invitation like that, how could he refuse? Shikamaru pulled his lips back to press his teeth against the soft skin of Neji's neck, then bit down gently, sucking at the skin trapped between his teeth. Neji's body jerked beneath him, though he couldn't tell if it was because of the bite or the friction of Shikamaru's hand.

When he had grown tired of kissing Neji's neck, Shikamaru drew back, finding a small bite-shaped mark in the crook between his neck and shoulder, and was surprised at the sudden wave of possessiveness that swamped over him at the sight. That mark was his, on Neji, like a stamp of ownership, and it made him want to make more on every part of Neji's body.

But Shikamaru repressed the urge and instead dragged his lips down Neji's chest, intent on a much greater prize. He stopped at a few places along the way, his teeth grazing Neji's nipples and his tongue dancing down his abdomen, but mostly he kept his course true, leading down to the waistband of Neji's pants and the pulsing erection waiting for him there.

When he let go of Neji's length, Shikamaru heard him give a small whimper of loss, but that was soon gone as he placed both hands on Neji's hips, keeping him pressed firmly against the mattress, and brought his mouth down to touch the tip of his erection. It was a good thing Shikamaru was restraining his hips, because Neji jerked at the contact, thrusting upwards shallowly and bringing his gaze down to lock with Shikamaru's.

"Easy, tiger," Shikamaru instructed with a smirk, pushing Neji's hips back down onto the mattress. "Let me do it, 'kay?"

Neji nodded emphatically, causing his hair to fall pash his shoulders in a rush. Keeping their eyes locked, Shikamaru lowered his mouth towards Neji's length and slowly opened his lips, letting his tongue fall out and tease the tip. Neji jerked again, but not as badly, so Shikamaru continued his exploration, kissing his way down one side and back up the other before letting his tongue follow the same path.

"Nn… mh… ah!" Neji cried out, shifting his body so he was balanced on one elbow and reaching forward with the other hand to grab the back of Shikamaru's scalp. "Shikamaru… please…"

 _Your wish is my command_ , Shikamaru wanted to quip back, but his mouth was otherwise occupied at the moment. Instead, he contented himself with humming gently, pressing his lips against the head of Neji's length in preparation for swallowing it whole. When he hesitated just a fraction of a second too long for Neji's tastes, Shikamaru felt the hand at the back of his head applying impatient pressure, so he chuckled in a low hum again, opening up his mouth and allowing the head of Neji's erection to pass through his lips. He descended down about halfway before he stopped, having felt it hit the back of his tongue and not quite sure if he wanted to deepthroat it on the first go. Eventually deciding against it, Shikamaru pulled his head upwards again, trailing his tongue purposefully along after him. When he reached the top of his arc, he pushed downwards again, feeling Neji's hot flesh slide more comfortably into his mouth this time. After the first few times, Shikamaru set up a comfortable rhythm, bobbing his head up and down Neji's length and hearing him cry out every time he went a little deeper.

Suddenly, Neji thrust shallowly upwards when Shikamaru was at the downward peak of his arc, driving himself almost to the back of his throat. For a few moments, Shikamaru almost choked, then he found his rhythm again, even with Neji's shallow thrusts. The hand at the back of his head fisted his hair without any regard for gentleness, pulling back harshly and shoving him downwards at the same time.

Eventually, the shallow thrusts Neji was making grew more and more irregular and his incomprehensible vocalizations escalated, letting Shikamaru know that he was likely getting close to his peak. Pulling his mouth off of his length, Shikamaru looked up just in time to catch Neji's expression as he came, his head thrown back and his jaw hanging loosely slack and his entire body spasmed and a stream of semen shot upwards to splatter against his own bare stomach and Shikamaru's face.

For a minute, maybe more, they stayed frozen, the only sound the harshness of Neji's panting. Eventually, though, he rolled his head forward, and Shikamaru found himself enraptured by the fervent blush staining his cheeks and his glazed, euphoric eyes. His chest heaved up and down with the force of his gasps, but they were becoming less ragged with every breath he took until he had regained enough energy to speak.

"I… I got your face," Neji panted somewhat apologetically, reaching down to cup Shikamaru's cheek. "Sor… sorry… 'bout that…"

Still coming down from the rush watching Neji come had given him, Shikamaru touched his cheek almost absentmindedly, surprised when his fingers came away wet. "Oh… I hadn't even noticed. Don't worry about it."

"But still…" Neji reached for something in the drawer of his bedside table, returning with a tissue that he used to wipe the evidence of his own orgasm from Shikamaru's face. "There. That's better."

"Hmmm… If you say so…" Shikamaru stole the tissue from Neji and used it to wipe away the residue from their exploits from his stomach. "Personally, I think I'd look hotter with it on my face, but to each his own, I suppose."

Neji looked surprised enough to choke at the quip at first, then he dissolved into laughter behind a raised hand. "You're something else, Shikamaru."

"I do try." Shikamaru leaned up and kissed Neji again, a kiss which was gladly reciprocated. He allowed himself to be swept along with Neji's flow until several seconds later, he found himself flat on his back on the mattress and Neji's hand at the waistband of his pants.

"Neji, what are you doing?" He asked suddenly, breaking away from Neji's hold.

"Reciprocating," Neji answered with a confused tilt to his head as if he didn't quite understand why Shikamaru was stopping him. "You did me, now I do you. It's only fair."

"Hold on, Neji!" Shikamaru pushed himself upright, forcing a confused Neji backwards. "It's… it's okay. You don't have to."

"Don't have to?" Neji's eyebrows drew together almost angrily. "But why-"

"Shhh…" Shikamaru sealed off the words coming from Neji's mouth with a kiss, and when he pulled away, his eyes had started to glaze over again. "That's enough for now, Neji."

"But-" Neji tried to protest again, but Shikamaru gently laid a finger against his lips.

"I said I was fine, Neji. You don't need to do that. So just let it go. Okay?"

His eyebrows racing up his forehead in surprise, Neji exclaimed, "Not until you give me a reason!"

"Well, I… uh…" For the first time that, Shikamaru stuttered over his words, embarrassment coloring his cheeks a slightly darker shade. "I'm… um… I'm a ghost, you know… and sometimes we don't have the same kind of physical reactions a people who are still alive, so…" He trailed off, scratching the back of his head to avoid having to look Neji in the eye.

Understanding dawned on Neji's face, followed immediately by a quick flash of something that looked suspiciously like disappointment. "I get it. Sorry, Shikamaru. I didn't mean to overstep my boundaries."

 _Boundaries that wouldn't exist if I had my way_ , Shikamaru thought, some of his frustration bleeding through into his normal tone as he spoke. "It's not your fault. I'm sorry, too." _Someday, we can do that and more. Just not today._

"Are you cold?" He asked abruptly, changing the subject so quickly that Neji blinked.

"No, I'm fine…"

"Good; then you can get rid of this thing." Shikamaru yanked the undone pajama top from Neji's shoulders and threw it aside, where it landed somewhere around when the chessboard was. "I can't stand it."

"Do you not like my taste in pajamas?" Neji asked tersely, folding his arms over his chest in mock anger.

"Forget taste, I don't like the fact that you wear pajamas. Real men sleep naked, Neji." A sudden thought occurred to Shikamaru. "Why do you wear so much clothes, anyway? And not just the pajamas; when you were in Konoha, you seemed almost allergic to wearing anything other than a three piece suit. Do you just not like people looking at your skin, or what?"

Turning his head to the side, Neji avoided Shikamaru's gaze, letting him know that he'd grazed a nerve. "The Hyuuga family is very… old fashioned. They don't believe in people showing more skin than they absolutely have to… which stems from the custom of generally forbidding… um… premarital sexual relations…"

 _Premarital sexual relations…_ Well, at least that solved the mystery of why Neji wore so much clothes, and the mystery of why he had no concept of his own sexual identity. It had probably been drummed into his head to avoid those kinds of thoughts since a young age. Not wanting to press Neji any further, Shikamaru draped his arm around his shoulders and pressed a quick kiss to his forehead.

"Are you tired?"

"A little," Neji admitted, curling into Shikamaru's embrace. "And Hinata is coming over again tomorrow morning so I have to wake up early…"

Shikamaru tried not to stiffen at the mention of Neji's younger cousin and began to pull away regretfully. "I suppose I should let you sleep, then."

He had almost disentangled himself when Neji grabbed his collar, keeping him from moving away. His mouth opened and shut a few times without releasing any sound before he muttered, "Stay the night?"

Shikamaru gazed down Neji's red-cheeked face, embarrassed to asking for something like that, and he couldn't say no. "Okay. I'll stay."

When Neji looked up into his eyes, barely concealed hope shining from his face, Shikamaru felt the bottom fall out of his stomach. "Really?"

"Yeah." With a flick of his wrist, Shikamaru turned off the lights and drew the comforter on the bed over Neji, settling down next to him on top of the covers. "I'll stay, so go to sleep soon, okay? I don't want to be the one to get in trouble because you can't wake up in time for your meeting tomorrow."

"I already… did that today…" Neji said with a yawn, his eyes drifting closed. "Night, Shikamaru…"

As he watched Neji's eyelashes flutter closed and his breathing settle itself into a regular pattern, Shikamaru couldn't resist kissing him on the forehead one last time. "Goodnight, Neji."

* * *

The light from the moon, almost as pale as the eyes of a Hyuuga, filtered down through a rare gap in the clouds, illuminating the soft strands of hair that fanned out over the pillow Neji's head rested on like fronds of sea-grasses swaying in a gently rippling tide. The body lying between him and the window did nothing to block the pale light, even when he propped himself up on his elbows, as the light shone directly through his transparent skin and onto the solid, live body beneath him. The only exception to this would, of course, be if Shikamaru chose to call up a physical shadow and have it block the silver fingers of the moon from ruffling his fairy boy's hair, but, then again, Shikamaru wasn't quite jealous enough of the moon to block its touch from Neji's hair.

Yet. He was getting there, though.

As he lay there watching Neji sleep, his face relaxed in slumber and exuding more youth and purity than he'd seen since he'd watched him sleep in the forest clearing almost three weeks ago, Shikamaru couldn't help but remember the words the ghost Hyuuga had whispered to him that afternoon before giving him a final warning to stay clear of Hyuuga business, words that, even now, haunted him.

 _I didn't jump; I was pushed. And the only people standing next to me were related to me by blood._

Shikamaru didn't know the crime she had committed in the eyes of the Hyuuga family, but he doubted it was something any sane person would have her killed over. And yet, it had happened, and if her words were to be trusted, Neji was also committing a grievous offense just by associating with him. The next question that begged to be asked, then, was what would happen to Neji if their relationship was brought to the attention of his family? Would he, like the woman, be killed in a way that could be framed as a suicide so not as to arouse suspicion?

The very thought caused Shikamaru's hand to clench and shake in rage, fisting the sheet Neji was lying under. A slight frown marring his sleeping visage, Neji shifted at the sensation, and Shikamaru quickly forced his hand to relax and let go of the sheet, watching as Neji settled back to his former position.

If Neji became a ghost like Shikamaru, that would solve a lot of issues - particularly physical ones - in their current relationship. However, not everyone who died stuck around after their death, which was likely particularly true of the Hyuugas, as the Hyuuga ghost had made it sound like her existence was against some unwritten rule and that if she was found out, she would be destroyed without any question asked. In addition, not all ghosts were equal in their mental functions; even if Neji did decide to stick around after his death, there was no guarantee he wouldn't become a vegetative spector over a phantom or draugr. No, that option was just too chancy to consider. Besides, Shikamaru felt a sudden ache in his heart when he thought about Neji dying that overshadowed any other logic on the topic.

This ache… and the sudden urge to wrap both his arms around Neji and pull him safely against his chest… Shikamaru frowned, the corners of his lips turning down in confusion. Was this… a protective instinct? From one who'd killed again and again under the duress of war, no less? The idea was almost laughable. And yet, the way the moon caressed her pale fingers through Neji's hair did fill Shikamaru with the unreasonable desire to send a beam of power up into the night sky and smash it to pieces. This was a reasonable punishment for daring to put her hands on his fairy boy, he figured.

"Shika… ma… ru…"

The whisper fell so softly from Neji's lips that for a second, Shikamaru wasn't sure if he'd really heard it. Then it came again, accompanied with a light sigh and a secret smile meant for one person alone.

"Shikamaru…"

Shikamaru felt his heart clench at the sound. His fairy boy was dreaming about him? The knowledge filled him with a burst of joy that he underestimated the strength of until he found himself unconsciously reaching for Neji's face and froze, his fingertips a hand's breadth away from his sleeping face. What was he doing in that dream with Neji, that he would call out his name in such a breathless voice?

"...Don't hurt the whale; they're on the endangered species list… Mmn, the shark is fine though; he ate my cat when I was trying to give him a bath… Do you know where the toilet paper is? Hinata needs it for an art project at school and all I can find is this box of scented tissues, and you know they only make your glasses more smudged when you try to wipe them off because of the lotion…"

Well, Shikamaru supposed, the human subconscious was an altogether terrifying expanse where no man should tread lightly. Still, he found the nonsense Neji was murmuring to be endearing, so he curled himself closer and settled down to listen until the syllables ran together into an unintelligible string of sounds that eventually faded into nothing as Neji hit a deeper level of sleep.

Maybe this whole "protective instinct" wasn't as bad as Shikamaru had first thought. Perhaps - just perhaps - he'd try it out for a little while.


	8. Dreaming of Solace

I have all week to do these, and I always end up posting them late at night on Sunday anyways. Oh, well.

And sorry I missed your review last week, **uchihas-don't-whine** , but thanks so much for your kind words! I'm glad you like the fourth wall breaks; they're really fun for me to write, and hopefully just as fun for you guys to read! Hope you like this chapter too and you got the answer to the question you asked in last week's chapter. (Don't worry if that wasn't specific enough - more info will be coming later)

Happy reading, guys! Addi out!

* * *

Sasuke lay in his bed on his side facing the wall, his phone clutched loosely in his hand. Ever since the text had come in from Neji the day before, he'd been marshalling his thoughts as best he could, but they'd been fracturing into sharp, hurtful shards before he could get them lined up in some semblance of order. He'd spent so many years of his life hating Itachi that the emotional catharsis of allowing himself to love him again had almost undone him, and then Itachi's disappearance again, directly afterword… even though he'd tond Neji he was fine, he was still suffering.

The phone in Sasuke's loose grip buzzed, but he ignored it. It had been doing that all day, and he had yet to even look at the caller ID. Not that it mattered much, anyway; if it was important, whoever it was would leave him a message.

Or seventeen, he discovered as he finally glanced down at his phone to discover the huge stack of notifications confronting him. Groaning, he almost threw the phone down again - he'd almost developed an aversion to the thing after the summer spent trying to stay out of touch with his parent - but at the last second he unlocked it instead. He could only sit there with thoughts of Itachi going round and round in his head like a carousel on the fastest setting for so long before he really drove himself mad.

With a sigh, Sasuke rolled onto his back and held the phone aloft, looking at the notifications for the voicemails he had gotten over the course of the day. To his surprise, he saw that they were all from Sakura. He tapped on the oldest message and held his phone up to his ear to hear her voice come out of the tiny speaker.

" _Hey, Sasuke; it's me! How are you doing? I just wanted to catch up with you, but you haven't been replying to my texts so I thought I'd call. Is this a bad time? Right, I forgot you were in a different time zone… but Chicago's only an hour away, isn't it? Oh, well, I'll try again later. Bye!"_

Sasuke had a smile on his face when he lowered the phone, the first he'd worn since the incident a day and a half ago. He hadn't thought too much about it at the time, being preoccupied with other things like Naruto and the Akatsuki, but Sakura had been a good friend to him over the summer. She'd forced him into uncomfortable situations and generally made a fool out of him, but she'd also dragged him out of his shell, talking books with him and making him feel welcomed, and hearing her voice again had reminded him of all that.

Scrolling quickly up the list of voicemails, Sasuke found one from several hours later and selected it.

" _Hey, Sasuke, it's me again."_ This time, her voice was a little strained. " _So… I see you're still not picking up. You okay? You're not hurt, are you? Anyway, I… uh… I didn't want to bug you, but I've obviously already done that considering how many messages I've left you… So… um… just give me a call back when you can! Kay, bye!"_

This time, Sasuke frowned. Why did she sound so harried? Was she just worried for him, or did something else happen? Just to make sure, he scrolled up to the most recent voicemail and selected it.

" _Hey, Sasuke… it's… it's me again."_ Sakura's voice sounded tired and drained, as if she had just come out of some major altercation. " _Sorry to keep calling you like this, but I really need to talk to you about something important… My parents keep asking me about something and I just need to talk to you about it… Sorry again for bugging you. I'll call again in a half hour or so. Bye."_

Sasuke lowered the phone from his ear when the message ended. What had caused Sakura to sound so despondent? Now he felt like an ass for not picking up on one of her seventeen earlier calls. Just how many chances had he been given? Sitting up swiftly, he hit the call back button and held his phone up to his ear.

Sakura picked up on the first ring, her voice breathless in Sasuke's ear. "Hello? Sasuke?"

"Sakura?" Sasuke sat up a little straighter in his chair. "Yeah, it's me. What's up? Sorry I wasn't answering your calls earlier-"

"Oh my gosh, Sasuke, are you okay?" Sakura yelled into into ear all in a rush, forcing him to yank the phone away from his face or brave a potential ruptured eardrum. "No broken bones? All your family's still alive? No tragic death of a family pet? House fire? Brain damage?! Quick, what's twelve times five-"

"Sakura!" Sasuke finally managed to cut her off, bringing his phone back to his ear once her screeching voice had ceased to issue from his speakers. "It's sixty, and I'm completely fine. Nothing happened to me. I just… had a rough patch, but I'm okay now."

"Rough patch?" Sakura's voice lost some of its franticness, but she still sounded worried. "Sasuke, are you sure you're okay? Did something happen?"

Sighing, Sasuke passed a hand over his eyes as if that would force the rest of the world away and into a corner where he wouldn't have to see it. "...Yes, but not to me and I don't really want to talk about it right now. Sorry, Sakura. I just… can't."

"That's okay; I understand," Sakura said kindly, but he heard the unasked questions in her voice that he knew would later have to be answered.

Quickly changing the subject, Sasuke asked, "What about you? I didn't listen to all of your messages, but I listened to a few and you sounded like you were having a rough time. What did you want to talk to me about?"

"Oh…" A world of dejected disappointment rang in that single syllable before Sakura's voice brightened again. "Sorry about that! I didn't mean to sound so caught up in myself. I just wanted to tell you that… tell you… I… I…"

"Sakura?!" Sasuke exclaimed, sitting bolt upright in his bed at the sound of her normally chipper tone bleeding through with hopelessness before trailing off into what sounded suspiciously like a sob. "What's wrong?"

"Everything!" She finally broke down, sobbing into the phone like it was her only chance to cry herself out, which it might have been. "I can't… I should have known… not to d-dream too high, hope too hard… I should known it was t-too good to be true-"

"Hold on, Sakura!" Sasuke cut her off, trying to speak calmly and knowing that he was failing. "Just- slow down, and tell me exactly what happened, from the beginning!"

"S-sorry, Sasuke" Sakura stuttered, taking several deep breaths to calm her jerky breathing. "I'm sorry, but I think I'm going to have to decline your offer of helping find scholarships because… because… I don't know if I'm even going to be able to go to college next year…"

She broke down again as Sasuke sat still in shock. Sakura had confessed to him that one of her oldest dreams had been to become a doctor, though her family didn't have enough money to afford it so she'd given up on it long ago. When he'd left, he'd made her a promise that if she really wanted it, he could get information from his father on which organizations gave out the kind of scholarships she would need, and she'd been absolutely overjoyed, giving him a hug so hard, he was surprised that none of his ribs had been broken. Why this abrupt about-face, then? What had happened to make her change her mind this quickly?

But when he thought about it, the answer was obvious enough.

"You told your parents, didn't you?" Sasuke asked, stifling the urge to groan.

"Mm-hm," Sakura sniffed, and the sound of a nose being blown echoed across the phone line. "We haven't started school yet, but I thought that I should start talking to them early about going to some of the college fairs in the area… and they shot me down flat. Told me that it wasn't any use trying to apply for colleges that probably wouldn't accept me, and that there wasn't any money available for me to go to college anyways. And then when I tried to bring up financial aid, they got even worse, saying that no daughter of theirs would take out a hundred thousand dollars worth of loans to get a useless degree - their words, not mine. So, I figured I should probably just… give up. I can go to a vocational school and get a technical license, or maybe a cheap community college with the money I've saved up working at the Hokage… So thank you for everything you've done for me so far, Sasuke, but I should probably stop here… before I get myself into something too big for me to handle."

"Hold it, Sakura-"

"It's okay, Sasuke," Sakura interrupted, sounding like she was going to cry again. "I've accepted it. There's some people who can pull themselves out of bad situations with hard work and talent and smartness, but I'm not one of those people. Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm just not one of those people. Goodbye, Sasuke."

Sasuke's mind raced as Sakura bid him farewell, the sound of her heartbroken voice getting more distant as she took the phone away from her face to end the call. His jaw tightened as a million thoughts flashed through his head. There were hundred, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people just like Sakura who had their dreams shattered every day because of stupid things like money or discouragement… why had he never thought of them before? They were human, just much as him- and more alive than the people he usually dealt with. Perhaps he didn't have it in his power to help all those people who needed it, but today, he had the power to help one of them, so he was going to do it!

Jumping off his bed, Sasuke landed upright and snapped, "Dammit, Sakura, don't you dare hang up that phone!"

"Huh?" Sakura gave a surprised squeak, but didn't disconnect the call. "Sasuke, I-"

"'You're not one of those people'?" He parroted back to her, something like anger flashing through his voice. "One of the people who works hard and is talented and smart? Don't give me that crap, Sakura! You worked so hard at the Hokage! You must work about forty hours a week, or more!"

"I average about forty-four," Sakura admitted, the tiniest hind of a smile in her voice.

"And anyone who reads like you do and can discuss the kinds of books we talked about over the summer is definitely smart!" Sasuke added, starting to pace back and forth in his room. "Do you know what your class rank is?"

This time, Sakura took a little longer in answering, but her voice held a little more pride. "Fourth, but the third and I were really close at the end of last year."

"See? I told you you were smart! Do you know what your GPA is?"

"Um… four point zero two, but I don't see what that has to do with just being smart; anyone can pad their GPA-"

"Wait," Sasuke interrupted, his mind starting to whirl. "Your GPA is higher than a four point oh? How did you do that?"

"Because my high school weights GPA calculations if you take higher level classes… what does this have to do with what we were talking about, again?"

"And you took those higher level classes?" Sasuke interrupted again, completely ignoring her question.

"Oh course I did; Sasuke, what are you trying to prove-"

"And extra-curriculars?" Sasuke asked excitedly, gripping his phone with both hands. "Were you in any clubs?"

"Um… an art club and a book club, and I ran track for a year when I was a freshman, and I helped paint sets for when Choji and Ino were in plays, and I was on student council junior year and I was elected again for senior year… Again, Sasuke, what does this have to do what we were talking about? If you're trying to make a point, it's not coming through."

"Just bear with it just a little longer." Sasuke's strides got even longer as the speed of his pacing increased. "So you were on the student council… did you have any leadership positions in the other clubs you were in?"

"I was the vice president of the book club last year and this year I'll be the president… Sasuke, what are you trying to prove?"

"I'm proving you wrong," Sasuke said, coming to a sudden stop in the middle of the room. "You say that only smart, talented and hard working people can overcome obstacles, and that you're not one of them, but from the way you just described yourself, you are one of them, and you have as much right to pursue any dream you want to as any other person does! You may think that you don't have a chance, but I'm telling you that you do! And so what if one option falls through, or two, or a dozen- there's always more chances if you look for them, and you'll only run out of options if you stop searching! So don't stop now, Sakura, not when you haven't even started! Give up if you want, but only after you've put up a fight!"

Silence resounded from Sakura's end of the connection, and for a moment Sasuke tensed, worried that he'd gone too far. Then he heard the sound of a small laugh fighting its way through tears, and he relaxed.

"I don't think I've ever heard you this passionate about anything before," she chuckled, her voice still thick from the tears she had shed but her laughter genuine. "What's gotten into you?"

Sasuke opened his mouth to answer the question, but he paused at the last second. This was out of character for him; even if he valued Sakura as a friend, there was no reason he should be this worried about her, or offer her this much help. It was probably because he was still shaken from his meeting with Itachi and his brother's subsequent disappearance and needed something, anything to grasp onto and give his some kind of purpose, but he didn't want to think of it in those terms because he felt like it weakened the action itself. He didn't want this to be a measure of his weakness; he wanted it to be a measure of Sakura's strength.

"Because I think you deserve it," he finally answered, feeling a pulse in his chest that told him he was speaking the truth. "Because you are smart, and talented, and hard-working, and all you need is for someone to recognize that and… you could be one of the best doctors in the country."

"Really?" Sakura asked breathlessly, and Sasuke could almost see the stars forming in her eyes at the thought. "Do you… do you really think I could?"

"You have as much of a shot as anyone." Sasuke leaned forward as his voice intensified, even though Sakura couldn't see him. "But don't give up now. Please, don't give up now. Let me speak to my father about some of the people he knows who do scholarships for medical students, and promise me you'll fill out the applications. If it doesn't work out, you can give up if you want, but please promise me you'll do at least that much."

It took a few seconds, but eventually Sasuke heard Sakura nod on the other end of the line. "Okay. Okay, I'll do it. You've convinced me. Just… don't expect too much, 'kay? And don't be too disappointed when it doesn't work out."

" _If_ it doesn't work out, Sakura," Sasuke corrected, "Which would be unlikely. We'll find you something, Sakura, because I won't stop trying until we do."

"Thank you, Sasuke," Sakura whispered into the phone, sounding like she might cry again. "I don't know what to say except… thank you. This is the nicest thing someone's ever done for me."

"Well, don't get too used to it," Sasuke chuckled, glad that he had succeeded in persuading her not to give up. "I'm sure the next time you talk to me, I'll be back to being the lovable asshole you got to know over the summer."

That drew a sarcastic snort from Sakura. "I'll look forward to it. Talk to you later, Sasuke."

"Talk to you later," Sasuke promised, listening to the quiet sound of Sakura's final goodbye before she hung up with a click.

Well. He'd gone and started something, so he better keep up with it. Straightening his shirt and running a hand through his hair to give the illusion that he hadn't just rolled out of bed, Sasuke strode out of his bedroom to find his father and ask him a couple of questions.

* * *

The sound of an alarm woke Neji the next morning, blaring just out of his reach with an ear-splitting racket. Pulled abruptly from the depths of sleep and still bleary, he hurled a floundering arm out to silence it, but missed and failed to cut off the horrendous noise. A growl of frustration escaping him, Neji dragged his eyes open to better aim for the infernal elusive silencing button just in time to watch an insubstantial arm reach over the top of him and casually flick off the alarm.

"Good morning, Neji," Shikamaru murmured in his ear, his voice husky as if from a sleep Neji knew he hadn't had. "Sleep well?"

"As well as I always do," Neji replied, stretching both arms over his head and noticing as he did so the way SHikamaru's arm was curled almost protectively around his waist, even though the covers Neji was sleeping under separated them by a few thin layers of fabric. "Shikamaru… did you stay like that the whole night?"

"Hmm?" Shikamaru's arm curled a little more securely around Neji's waist, and he nuzzled a little closer to his ear. "... Pretty much."

A wave of guilt without an easily identifiable source swept through Neji. "God, Shikamaru, I'm sorry; I didn't mean to make you stay - I mean, I wanted you to stay, but you didn't have to stay right next to me - you were probably bored the whole night-"

"Shh…" Shikamaru cut Neji off with a finger against his lips. "Don't worry about that; I had plenty of entertainment. I meditated a bit, had a heated discussion with the moon about her overly familiar habits concerning your hair, listened to your adorable sleep talk, and then almost made myself believe that I was really asleep next to you before that blasted alarm went off in my ear and shattered that illusion. You should really give it a talking to - it's not nice to crush people's daydreams like that."

"What are you talking about?" Neji asked confusedly, though he couldn't bring himself to do it crossly. "A heated discussion with the moon; give my alarm clock a talking to? Are you sure you didn't spend the night hallucinating?"

"No more that you were," Shikamaru retorted gently, reaching up to brush a few sleep tousled locks away from Neji's cheek. "You were muttering a whole lot of nonsense about whales and sharks, then about needing to help your cousin make a paper mache model for school. That part made me laugh; I doubt someone as prissy as you has ever even touched the stuff before."

"And on that guess, you would be right." Neji frowned in the middle of his sentence. "Do I really talk in my sleep?"

"Loud as a bell, and crystal clear, too." Shikamaru elevated his torso off the bed, looking down at Neji with a smirk. "Though not too coherent. As I mentioned before, there was a long spiel on sharks that I couldn't make heads or tails of."

"That's weird," Neji said thoughtfully, his mind starting to wander. "No one's ever told me that I talk in my sleep before…"

"Well, have you ever actually slept with someone else before?"

Neji was silent for a few moments as he considered this. "Point taken. Hope I didn't say anything too embarrassing, then."

"Neji, you were embarrassed when you had grass stuck to your pants. To you, anything less than perfection is embarrassing." Shikamaru gave him a cheeky grin. "But it was just me, so you've got nothing to worry about, 'kay? I keep secrets well."

"So I've gathered," Neji remarked dryly, then answered Shikamaru's smile with one of his own, looping his hands around his neck. "So, what did I say? Other than the sharks or the paper mache, that is. I have absolutely no idea where those came from."

"Hmmm… a lot of things actually, but it was mostly just nonsense." Shikamaru tilted his head downwards until his forehead rested against Neji's. "You did say my name a lot, though."

Neji's gaze narrowed. "Did I? How many times is 'a lot'?"

"Twenty, thirty times maybe? I wasn't keeping track." Shikamaru's eyes suddenly clouded over with the same expression he'd worn last night, which Neji recognized as lust, and a smirk played at the corners of his mouth. "Some of them were pretty sultry, too. What I would have given to see what was making you say my name like that-! I almost woke you up a couple times just to ask you, but I decided that I liked the show enough to let it keep playing."

True to form - and probably exactly as Shikamaru predicted, which only made Neji madder - Neji felt his cheeks heat uncomfortably hot from embarrassment, and he tried to shove Shikamaru away from him with one hand. "Get off me, stupid! Stop teasing me and let me up!"

"Stupid? Are you really degrading into elementary-school insults right now?" Shikamaru asked with mock hurt in his eyes, catching Neji's hand and preventing it from moving by lacing their fingers together. "Plus, I'd hoped that after all the time we'd have spent together might have proved that wrong by now, but I suppose I was too hasty in my assumptions. Now you've gone and hurt my feelings, Neji. How are you going to make up for that?"

Squirming slightly to try and get out from underneath Shikamaru, Neji tugged against their conjoined hands, but to no avail. "If what you're expecting is 'kiss it and make it feel better', Shikamaru, the answer is no. Let me get up, smartass. I have to get ready before Hinata comes."

"Ah, there's a more appropriate insult." Shikamaru somehow managed to smirk and give Neji puppy-dog eyes at the same time. "Not even a little one? I promise I'll be good and won't take more than that."

Shifting and tugging at their conjoined hands again, Neji tried to hold out longer, but eventually Shikamaru's pleading gaze broke down his resolve. "Okay, fine. Come here, you."

Reaching behind Shikamaru's head, Neji hooked his hand behind his neck and guided his face closer until their lips met, his eyes reflexively closing when he felt the other caress his cheek. True to his word, Shikamaru didn't push his boundaries, not even trying to get Neji to open his mouth, instead letting the light pressure of his lips make his point, keeping the kiss chaste and sweet while also making the room suddenly feel several degrees hotter.

When Shikamaru pulled away, Neji didn't want to let him, but overrode his baser instincts with a quiet sigh. His eyelashes fluttered open to see Shikamaru's face only inches from his own, a wide smile starting to stretch his cheeks.

"Good morning," he whispered huskily, his eyes darting back and forth between each of Neji's.

"Good morning," Neji repeated breathlessly, trying not to stare at Shikamaru's lips and hoping that if he wasn't succeeding, at least Shikamaru wouldn't notice.

A light chuckle told Neji that his hopes hadn't been answered. "Do you want me kiss you again, Neji?" He asked quietly, trailing his thumb from the hand resting on Neji's cheek over to gently nudge Neji's lower lip.

Instead of answering, Neji drew Shikamaru back down to him, feeling the vibrations of his muted chuckle against his mouth when their lips met. Purposefully, Neji wound both his arms around Shikamaru's neck and pulled him closer, urging him to open his mouth and invade Neji's with that supple tongue he'd used to tease him the night before… in more places than just his mouth. Neji involuntarily shifted at the memory, feeling other places in his body start to tingle and heat up, and he resisted the urge to let out an aroused noise from the back of his throat. The logical half of his mind knew that he should pursue his original goal and get up so he would be ready when Hinata came, but the other half definitely wanted to stay there in that bed with Shikamaru, and that half was becoming increasingly more insistent. Unable to help himself, Neji pressed a sultry lick against Shikamaru's bottom lip, pulling away for just a second to gauge the surprised happiness in Shikamaru's expression before diving back in again so hard he felt his teeth clack against Shikamaru's. Galvanized by the action, Shikamaru caught Neji's face in both of his hands and pressed their mouths together more firmly, not even allowing Neji enough room to breathe. Air barely passing through his nose in quick pants, Neji pressed back, wanting Shikamaru closer, completely surrounding him, the only thing in his field of vision or any of his other senses and-!

 _Bleeep! Bleeeeep! Bleeeeeeeeeeeep! Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep! I_

Neji's alarm went off again, more insistently than before, jolting both of them so hard that they smacked their faces together in a painful impact. Throwing off both the sheets and Shikamaru with them, Neji hurled an arm across his nightstand, knocking the alarm clock to the floor and finally causing it to cease its shrieking.

A few moments of blessed silence resounded through the room before Neji rounded on Shikamaru. "I thought you turned that thing off?!"

"So did I!" Shikamaru rubbed his temple where Neji's forehead had struck him. "I hit the button!"

"Which button?!"

"I don't know, the big one! It made it go quiet!"

Neji shoved his body ungainly from the bed to reach down and pick up the alarm clock on the floor, noting the large button on the top labeled _Snooze_. "You didn't turn it off; you hit the snooze button!"

Shikamaru threw his hands into the air. "What's the difference!?"

"Snooze doesn't shut it off; it just resets it to go off five minutes later!"

"Well, how was I supposed to know that!? I wasn't even born when those things were invented!"

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Neji snapped, "Well, you've been around enough since! Haven't you watched anybody else wake up in the last fifty years?"

"Of course I haven't!" Shikamaru snapped right back, folding his arms over his chest stubbornly. "It's boring as all hell! I've never thought about watching someone else sleep until I met…" His eyes widening, Shikamaru trailed off as if realizing belatedly the magnitude of the confession he had accidentally made.

Neji took a step towards Shikamaru like he was being reeled in by someone invisible force, all sense of irritation forgotten. "Until you met… me?"

Shifting uncomfortably, Shikamaru looked down at the bedcovers and his fingers twining themselves nervously through the fabric. "Yeah. Until I saw you fall asleep in the clearing, I never considered watching someone as they slept. But you changed my mind."

Like an invisible hook had caught at his ribcage and tugged him forward again, Neji took another step toward Shikamaru. "How?"

Shikamaru lifted his face again so he was looking directly into Neji's eyes. "Because you changed forms, right in front of my eyes, and I couldn't help but be struck with the feeling that if I looked away from you for even a second, I would miss it. I wanted to watch you change again because seeing your evolution was breathtaking."

"My... evolution?" Neji asked again, taking another step forward so his knees were almost brushing up against his bed.

"Mm-hm." Shikamaru reached up to lay a hand against Neji's cheek now that he was in range. "The evolution of your personality. You show me a different side of yourself when you're asleep, a much younger and more innocent version of yourself. Watching you make that transition between then and now helps me understand a little of how you must have grown up… and that brings me one step closer to unravelling all the mysteries that make up you."

"Is that the only reason why you're here?" Neji asked quietly, watching Shikamaru's eyes with intensity.

Shikamaru smirked and gave Neji's cheek a pinch before withdrawing his hand. "Well, you are giving me a very compelling bonus." Then his cheeky smile faded into something more serious. "No. No, it's not the only reason why I'm here. I set out to unravel all your mysteries… but somewhere along the way, I got caught in all the trailing threads and now I couldn't leave even if I wanted to."

Suddenly uncomfortable, Neji looked away at the ground. When he went to speak, he found his throat was dry and it took several swallows before he managed to make a sound. "You… you should probably go. You don't want to be within a half mile of this place when Hinata gets here, or she could recognize your aura, and then we'd both be in trouble."

Shikamaru suddenly stood, understanding in his eyes. "I scared you, didn't I? Sorry about that. It was probably too much for you to handle at once. I'll leave and let you think about it. See you this evening, Neji."

He turned to go, but just before he ghosted out through the window, Neji called out, stopping him. "Wait!"

Turning back around with an eyebrow raised, Shikamaru pointed glanced at him, conveying his question without any words. Suddenly feeling sheepish for calling out to him, Neji scratched the back of his head and looked down at the floor. "Just… be careful, okay? No stunts like the one yesterday. I don't want you to get caught by the Hyuuga patrols."

The only indication Shikamaru gave of affirmation was a slight tilt to his head. "Is six again okay, or do you want more time to figure out what you need to?"

"Six… six should be fine."

"Good. See you then, Neji."

"See you then… Shikamaru…"

But the phantom had already left, ghosting through the window without a backwards glance. With a sigh, Neji turned around and suddenly caught sight of his reflection in the mirror on top of his dresser. Shikamaru had convinced him to sleep without his pajama shirt last night, and so he could clearly see the damage that had been inflicted upon his body. His neck was marked with a rather impressive looking hickey, and a set of almost perfect teeth marks gleamed ruddily against his skin directly under the purple mark. Teeth marks?! Really?! When had Shikamaru bitten him?

Heaving an even greater sigh, Neji walked to his dresser and dug through to almost the bottom of the drawer full of shirts. Today was going to have to be a turtleneck kind of day. Whoopie.


	9. Coming Home

So, again, this isn't a Sunday... but it's a longer(ish) chapter (please be nice to me...)

But after this Friday I'm going to have a lot more free time to write so I should get back to my original schedule!

Happy reading, everyone! Addi out!

* * *

For the second time in as many days, Itachi found himself waking up in an unfamiliar room, but didn't care one twit about because of the large, comfortably familiar body resting next to him. Stretching with a smile, he felt the sheets ride down his back, exposing it to the air, slightly chillier than yesterday's, but gathered that while he had slept shirtless, he was still wearing his pants, unlike the first morning. Owing to the very little sleep he'd gotten the previous night and his inability to amuse himself with the invisible passing scenery, he'd fallen asleep in the car a few hours after they'd left, but woken up again every time they'd changed cars and when they'd at last reached the noisy New York City.

Though the drive from Chicago to New York would normally only take about twelve hours or so, they'd taken so many detours to confuse any potential pursuers that it had taken more than thirty, nearly three times the normal time. They'd headed directly south for a long time before the car had dropped Kisame and Itachi at the safe house overnight and continued to head south in the hopes of tricking anyone who might be following them into thinking that they were trying to make the Mexican border. After that, the car that had picked Kisame and Itachi up in the morning had headed directly west, away from New York, before they'd changed cars again in the parking lot of a vacant gas station just over the Kansas border, which it turn took them back east and a little more south through mostly back roads before they'd changed cars one final time in Virginia. The last car had taken them directly north, past D.C and Baltimore, and missing New York City entirely, they drove another hour north before finally doubling back and entering the city from the north side. In Itachi's opinion, it was a little more deception and trickery than was strictly necessary, but Kisame was the one who had more experience in these matters, so he had agreed to the plan easily enough.

It had been very late when they'd finally arrived at the place Itachi would learn to call his new home, perhaps even as late a five or six in the morning; it was impossible to tell without being able to judge the light, and he hadn't bothered to ask anyone. From the distant sounds that permeated the city air that reeked of stale cigarette smoke and the stench of loneliness and want, Itachi knew they weren't in the greatest neighborhood, but he didn't care. Anywhere was better than the personal hell he'd been locked up in for the past eight years.

Even though he'd slept through most of the day, Itachi was still exhausted - mentally, at least - when they arrived, so much so that he'd almost fallen asleep standing up while Kisame was being welcomed back, prompting him to cut the meeting short to take him to bed. That was something that Itachi resented a little bit; yes, he was tired, but he could have just fallen asleep in a chair somewhere rather than disturbing to welcoming party, but Kisame had insisted that he was tired as well and that the meeting could just as easily take place the next morning- or afternoon, as the case might be, since it was already morning.

After that, Kisame had brought Itachi to his room after telling the men who had met him that he would stay with him that night and they'd figure out other arrangements the next day. He'd spent a little time bringing Itachi around the room and letting him feel the placement of the furniture before all but commanding him to go to sleep, an order Itachi happily obeyed, curling up into a ball on the comfortable mattress Kisame had pushed him towards and letting the other man pull the covers up over him. He assumed that was when he'd taken off his shirt as well, though he was so tired he had no memory of it.

Slipping stealthily from under the covers so as not to wake Kisame, Itachi snuck out of the bed and set out to explore the room. He remembered the vague placements of the things Kisame had pointed out to him the night before - table beside his side of the bed, dresser across the room, closet next to that, door to the hallway directly opposite- but he hadn't really had the time to map out what the room looked like in his head so he could move around in it comfortably, as he'd done for the padded white cell he'd lived in for the past eight years. Having a concrete understanding of where he was would make a little bit of the nervousness eating away at him go away- though, to be fair, he wasn't a hundred percent sure whether the fluttering in his stomach was due to being scared or excited.

Keeping an arm out in front of him to avoid bumping into anything, Itachi crept across the room in search of the largest and most convenient landmark: the dresser. Feeling slightly like an idiot and glad that Kisame was asleep and not watching him flail about the room like a silly child, he swept his arms back and forth in front of him until his hip collided painfully with the corner of some unidentified piece of furniture. He hissed in pain, barely able to keep himself from swearing aloud and potentially waking up Kisame, before he allowed his hands to explore what his smarting hip had discovered but his eyes couldn't see.

It was the dresser, he surmised after a few minutes of running his hands along its surface, but one of the waist-high ones with a vanity on top, rather than a taller one, like he'd expected, so his waving arms had gone right over the top of it instead of making contact and keeping him from colliding with it. The discovery left him with an irritated grimace and a sore hip, but at least he wouldn't make the same mistake twice. Leaning forward, he pressed his fingers to the wall directly above the dresser, not particularly surprised when they came into contact with a cool sheet of some smooth material that he guessed was a mirror.

With a sigh and a grimace at the twinge in his hip - which would probably bruise, given how hard he'd hit the damn thing - Itachi pushed himself away from the dresser and trailed his hand along the wall until he came to the door that led out into the hallway. His fingers trailed down the grain of the wood before finding the doorknob. He nodded to himself; he wasn't ready to leave the room yet, but it was good to know where it was. The placement of both the dresser and the door now firmly in his mind, Itachi kept going around the room, taking stock of the closet door, the window he hadn't known was there until his hand traveling across the wall had suddenly met with glass instead of wallpaper, and the lamp on Kisame's side of the bed before his knees hit the bed and he found himself standing directly over the man who had made this all possible for him, his breathing deep and heavy, telling Itachi that he was still asleep. For a second, Itachi felt the wild desire to bend down and kiss him, but he pushed it back down. He couldn't wake him; not yet, at least.

Turning away from Kisame's sleeping form, Itachi walked the length of the bed before finding the two posts at the bottom corners. He leaned in between them and held both at the same time, memorizing the space of the interval, before moving back to his side of the bed to find the bedside table and repeating the process all over again. He walked a little more quickly this time as he made his circuit, deftly placing his hands where he expected his landmarks to be. He missed a few times, searching for almost a minute against the wall for the window and almost smacking into the dresser again, but on the whole he was starting to get a feel of the place. After he completed his second circuit around the room, he did a third and then a fourth and a fifth until he could walk confidently around the whole room without missing any of his targets or running into anything.

Itachi took a deep breath. Now came the real test.

Very carefully, he walked into the center of the room - or what he deemed to be approximately the center of the room - and faced the bed, which he could pinpoint the location of from Kisame's soft snores. Deliberately, he turned away from the bed and started walking until he reached the wall, then he held out his hand.

Damn. He'd been aiming for the closet, but all he felt beneath his fingertips was wallpaper. Swiping his hand about a foot to both the left and right, he discovered that he was only about six inches to the left of the closet that he'd been aiming for.

Well, for a first try, it wasn't horrendous.

Gritting his teeth, Itachi turned around, aiming for a new spot, and started walking toward it. About what he guessed would be a step away, he stopped, feeling around in the air for the corners of the dresser so he wouldn't smash into them again. When he didn't feel anything, he took another step forward and found the edge of the dresser just out of reach of his original position. So the room was about a pace shorter than he had anticipated. He could work with that. Turning around, he pressed his back against the dresser to gauge his placement in the room, then started forward again.

This time he underestimated the length of the room, hitting the bedpost on the way to the window. The sound of sliding fabric emanated from the bed as Kisame shifted in his sleep, and Itachi froze and held down a curse under his breath, hoping that he wouldn't wake up. After several seconds ticked by and the regular sound of Kisame's deep breathing began to permeate the room, Itachi relaxed again and got his bearing before continuing on to the window, finally hitting it dead center. Success.

Now that he'd managed once successfully, Itachi's nerves lessened somewhat, and he felt some of the tension he hadn't realized was in his shoulders drain out of his body. He could do this. Very carefully, he turned around and took a deep breath, then headed across the room again, going from landmark to landmark in random order and at rapidly increasing tempo.

Window to bedpost.

Bedpost to bedside table.

Bedside table to doorknob.

Doorknob to lamp.

Lamp to closet door.

Closet door back to bedpost.

Bedpost to dresser.

Dresser back to closet door.  
Closet door to window to lamp.

Lamp to doorknob to bedside table.

Bedside table to window to lamp to doorknob.

Dresser. Bedpost. Closet door. Doorknob. Window. Dresser. Window. Lamp. Bedpost. Closet door. Bedside table. Dresser. Lamp. Doorknob. Around and around Itachi went, his concentration growing as he tagged each landmark more surely and accurately each time, hardly paying attention to the regular pattern of Kisame's breathing turning into an irregular one as he shifted again, finally being drawn out of his sleeping state by the sound of Itachi's feet beating regularly against the floorboards.

"What are you doing?" He finally asked after watching Itachi move without any clear direction around his room for almost a full minute, breaking him out of his concentration and almost causing him to trip over his own feet in shock at being directly addressed.

"Kisame!" Itachi cried in surprise as he righted himself from his near-tumble, his head whipping towards the bed even though he couldn't see Kisame. "Did I wake you up? Sorry; I was trying to be quiet-"

"It's fine," Kisame interrupted, bringing the tirade of words to an abrupt halt. "I was going to wake up soon anyway. You didn't answer my question, though; what were you doing?"

"Memorizing the room." To show off, Itachi strode confidently towards the bed, tagging the bedpost with his palm before trailing his hand across the covers Kisame was laying under to find a spot where he could sit down without settling his weight on top of Kisame's legs. "See?"

"Impressive," he remarked, sitting up straighter so he could lean forward and wrap Itachi in his embrace- which he did, much to the blind man's chagrin. "How long did it take you?"

"About twenty minutes," Itachi replied, both embarrassed by and comfortable in the embrace. "It'd take a bit longer than that for a larger room, though, but I'm confident I could walk around here comfortably now unless someone moved anything. Of course, I probably won't be staying here, so it was kind of a useless exercise anyway, but I was glad of the practice."

Unexpectedly, Kisame's arms tightened around Itachi. "Won't be staying here?"

"In this room," Itachi clarified, his face pointing down towards his lap. "You told the men you met last night that I'd stay with you for last night, but we'd find alternate sleeping arrangements for me. I assumed that would mean not with you, and not in this room."

"So… you don't want to stay with me?"

"I didn't say that, now did I?" Itachi turned his face to the side to press his cheek into the top of Kisame's spiky hair. "I'd love to stay with you, but I don't think that would be wise or appropriate. You're a leader now, Kisame, so you have to be careful what people think of you. I think it would be better if we slept apart, for now at least. I don't want any of the people who follow you to start spreading rumors about you."

"I don't care about that kind of thing!" Kisame announced, releasing Itachi from his embrace and taking hold of both of his shoulders. "So what if people talk, so what if they spread rumors! That just makes it easier for them to underestimate us, and easier for us to show them up. I'm not the kind of man who worries about what other people say, Itachi; why do you think I could work in a profession like nursing and personal care in a hospital, looking like I do? I refuse to lie to people who will be trusting me to lead them! What are we hiding, anyway? The fact that we might be in some kind of _relationship_?"

The verbally italicized word caused Itachi to freeze and his heart rate to go up so quickly, he was glad that he no longer had the heart rate monitor around his wrist to give off an alarm when the danger zone was reached. "A-are we?"

"That depends." Kisame shifted away, letting Itachi sit up without any support. "Do you want to be?"

Itachi automatically averted his face from Kisame's gaze so he wouldn't be able to read what he was thinking. Yesterday morning, when he'd woken up and told Kisame that he wanted to stay with him forever, he'd dismissed it as the rush of endorphins from finally escaping the hell his life had been for the past eight years talking. He also knew that people who spent a lot of time together, particularly in highly stressful environments, tended to form stronger emotional bonds because the stress caused them to latch onto anything they could to make themselves feel valued. He was sure of what he was feeling, but he also knew that the heady rush of endorphins hadn't quie left his system yet, and he had spent the last eight years in the most stressful environment possible, the last six-to-eight months of it in extremely close quarters with Kisame, so unfortunately he was checked off in both those categories, and he knew Kisame would know it, too. Still, he wouldn't allow himself to keep quiet, so he squeezed his hands tighter in his lap to stop their trembling and gave a nod to himself before turning his face back to Kisame.

"Kisame, I lo-"

Before Itachi could finish the word, Kisame placed a hand over his mouth, cutting off the sound escaping him. Even if he wanted to, Itachi couldn't have been able to hide the hurt that spiraled across his features at the action, and a wave of rejection and injured pride crashed over him so hard, he was sure he would have been blinking back tears if he'd still possessed the ability. Shaking off Kisame's hand, Itachi turned away from him.

"If you didn't want to hear me say it, you should have just said so earlier," he muttered, trying to get up from the bed before his heart could suffer any more permanent damage, but Kisame's hard darted forward and grabbed his arm at the last second.

"Damn it, that's not what I meant! Don't-! Just listen, Itachi, okay?"

"Fine!" Itachi snapped, sitting back down on the bed but purposefully avoiding his face from Kisame's. He heard a sigh from Kisame before he continued.

"We both know what I'm going to say; I saw it on your face when you were deciding you to respond. So let me just say this: I know a lot about psychology, and I know that people can trick their emotions into believing a lot of things, especially after going through what happened to you. I don't want you to say something now that you'll regret later."

Itachi didn't know why that single sentence made him so irritated, but it did. "Quit trying to protect me, Kisame! I can take care of myself, especially my own emotions-"

"Protect you? Hell, no! This is one of the most selfish things I've ever done!" Kisame grabbed Itachi by the back of his neck and brought him in close enough to feel the heat of his breath on his face. "When you tell me you love me, it's going to be absolutely not because I was the only person who was nice to you in the last eight years and one hundred percent because you've fallen for me as hard as I have for you."

Itachi froze for a second time in as many minutes as Kisame's words sank in. _Because you've fallen for me as hard as I have for you… I have… for you… I've fallen for you…_

A huge, silly grin spread across his face as he got what Kisame was trying to say, and he tackled the other man in a giant hug. His overly-strong body saved Kisame from falling over backwards back onto the bed from the force of the impact, but even so, Itachi heard a painful-sounding smack when his forehead thudded into Kisame's chin, forcing his teeth together with a sharp click. Immediately he backed off again, horrified by what he might have done, but Kisame only laughed, rubbing his abused chin cheerfully.

"Now _that's_ the reaction I was hoping to see."

"Promise you mean it?" Itachi pressed, grabbing Kisame's face in his hands so he could feel the skin around his mouth stretch as he spoke.

"I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it." By the way his cheekbones raised slightly, Itachi could tell that he was smiling, and couldn't help but grin back.

Using his hands as a guide, he leaned forward and kissed Kisame, feeling his lips turn up at the corners. When he pulled back, Itachi found that he was breathing hard, even though the kiss had lasted mere seconds and hadn't been rough. "If it's time you want," he said, placing his forehead against Kisame's, "I can give it to you. I'll wait as long as it takes for you to be convinced it's really me talking, not my endorphins or whatever- within reason, of course. Just don't expect me to change my mind."

"I would expect nothing less from you." Kisame reached up and adjusted the bandana over Itachi's eyes that he had worn to bed, fixing it so that it lay more flush against his skin. "After all, it's a little late in the game now to be changing your mind."

"That's why I don't intend to." Itachi gave Kisame one last smile before leaning back and standing up. "Now, we should probably get ready to meet your subordinates before they get worried and bust in here to check on you. You wouldn't happen to know all of the names of those men who met us yesterday, would you? I think we need to formulate a plan."

* * *

"Neji, are you okay? You're acting even weirder than you were yesterday."

Neji was shaken out of his thoughts for the second time in as many days by the quiet voice of his younger cousin, her pale eyes giving him a disapproving look. Starting a little guiltily, Neji sent a smile in her direction and shifted into a slightly more comfortable position. He and Hinata were sitting cross legged on his living room floor, close enough that their knees were touching. She had been practicing opening up the channels of power in her body to activate the Byakugan eyes, though she hadn't yet been successful at it, and Neji's mind had wandered during her meditation enough for him not to notice her stopping her practice.

"Sorry, Hinata," he apologized automatically, stretching his arms out in front of him to work the kink from his shoulders from sitting still too long. "I've been letting my mind wander too much these past few days. Maybe I should be the one doing these meditation exercises instead of you." He forced a chuckle that he hoped didn't sound too fake. "What was it that you wanted?"

By the narrowing of her eyes, Neji could tell that Hinata wasn't buying what he was saying, but she let it go in favor of asking her original, unheard question. "Hm. Well, while you were spaced out, I asked you if you thought all this time spent doing nothing but meditation was actually doing something for me, or whether it had another purpose."

Neji's eyebrows knitted together; he could tell by the deepening vocal fry in Hinata's tone that she was very irritated, and that coupled with the fact that she'd come to him for advice instead of her father meant that this was serious. "Explain."

Hinata drew in a deep breath as she let her gaze fall downwards to her lap, where her hands were clenching and unclenching in a vicious cycle in an unsuccessful attempt to stop them from shaking. "Is this really helping me? All these hours just sitting here, doing nothing but focusing and concentrating on something I can't even feel? Am I actually learning anything… or am I just doing this every day with you to get me away from the house and out of the way of everyone else? Are the elders just sweeping me under the carpet because I haven't even been able to activate my eyes yet?"

"Oh, Hinata…" Neji breathed, reaching out to gently brush away the bangs hiding her dispassionate eyes. "Of course what you're doing is important! I know it seems boring and tedious now, but I promise it will get better. Everyone starts like this; even I spent hundreds of hours in the exact same position you're in when I was younger."

"But not when you were sixteen," she muttered, her gaze not meeting his.

Neji sucked in a sharp breath he immediately wished he hadn't when he was the hurt look on Hinata's face, like he had just backed up her point without meaning to. He struck out on damage control, carefully choosing each one of his words to avoid making her more upset.

"Just because you're a late bloomer doesn't mean you'll be incapable of doing the Byakugan. There are plenty of Hyuuga who don't learn how to control - or even activate - their until their teen years! One of the elders even told me that he was nineteen before he could fully control his, and look where at what he is now. So you have nothing to worry about, Hinata. It will come when your body is ready to support it, and no sooner, so all you can do until that time is practice and prepare for it as best you can."

"That's easy for you to say," Hinata muttered, something like a shadow of pain reflected in her pale eyes. "You were able to use your Byakugan when you were nine. You don't know what it's like to hear everyone whispering around wherever you go, wondering if you're really the daughter of one of the current heads of the family, given that I can't do anything!"

"Hinata!" Neji leaned forward and grabbed Hinata's shoulders, forcing her to look at him. The pain he saw in her eyes, the kind he used to feel before he'd steeled his heart to any outside intervention - with, as the current situation he found himself in seemed to suggest, had been only partially effective - made his chest feel tight with an empathetic phantom pain. "I know it's hard, in more ways than I can recount, but please believe me when I say you just have to persevere. It doesn't ever completely go away, but it will get better, I promise. When you're old enough, you can move out like I did, and then you won't have to be around all the stares anymore. It might take a few years, but it's worth the wait, I promise."

Hinata sighed, breaking the eye contact she'd held with Neji throughout his speech. "I know, Neji. I know it will get better. It's just… knowing it will get better doesn't seem to matter right now, when everything is happening."

"I know." Without giving her time to pull away, Neji wrapped his arms around Hinata, bringing her in close against his chest. "I know knowing doesn't help. I just… don't know what else I can say other than I'm sorry that I'm not there any more to protect you."

"You don't have anything to be sorry for-"

"Yes, I do," Neji interrupted, his embrace tightening almost infinitesimally around Hinata. "I'm sorry I left you alone there when I promised I'd keep you safe from them."

"It's not your fault, Neji; you didn't have a choice-"

"And you're wonderful for telling me that, even if it's not true," he interrupted again, gently patting the back of Hinata's head before letting her pull back. "I don't know what I did to deserve a little sister like you."

Hinata's face lit up when Neji called her his little sister. Even though they weren't blood siblings, only cousins, she had often told Neji that he was the big brother she had always wanted, and it never failed to cheer her up when he caller her that. Now that she was smiling once again, he pushed her back to the position she had been sitting in and adjusted himself opposite, but this time took ahold of her hands.

"Now that we've cleared that up, why don't you try one more time? I have an idea that might give that bothersome family of ours something better to gossip about."

The smile didn't leave Hinata's face, but her eyebrows did draw together slightly. "Sure, but… why are you holding my hands? You've never done that before."

"Because I'm going to do something I've never done before." He flashed her a reassuring smile. "Do you trust me?"

Nodding emphatically, Hinata closed her eyes again. "Of course!"

As Neji watched, Hinata took several deep breaths to calm down her heart rate and began to focus on the channels of energy inside of her that she had yet been unable to access. Her shoulders were more tense than before, likely because of his hands on hers, but when he gave them a light squeeze, she forced herself to relax and the tension drained out of her body. When he assumed that enough time had passed for her to be adequately moving power throughout her body, Neji gathered the energy resting in his own core and tapped into it, bringing it up to his eyes.

"Byakugan," he said quietly but distinctly, knowing that Hinata could hear the word even if the only sign she gave was a slight shiver as the wave of power washed over her.

With his vision now unhindered, Neji found himself momentarily distracted by the new influx of colors and shapes that his cleared eyes allowed him to see, as he always did, but the distraction passed quickly and his gaze narrowed as he focused on Hinata.

Looking closely at another Hyuuga with the Byakugan eyes was considered one of the most invasive things a Hyuuga could do, because it allowed the person looking to map out every power line and wash of emotion in their body. In certain cases, however, it could be used to figure help another learn to control their own power, as Neji was doing for Hinata now. After carefully letting his eyes sift through the colors of her emotions - mostly a mixture of nervousness, irritation, and conviction - he found the unique color of the Hyuuga energy, a shade that existed nowhere else but in the body of Hyuugas.

Usually, the energy flowed freely through a Hyuuga's body unless it was called upon, when it flowed upwards to their eyes, and dissipated back through the body once it was released. In Hinata's case, since she was focusing on trying to activate her eyes, it should have been all in her head, at least, even if she couldn't get all of it completely focused on her eyes. Instead, however, it was stuck in her throat, like an invisible barrier had formed where her mouth should be and wasn't letting the energy any higher.

Well, that was the answer to that question. Hinata couldn't activate her eyes because the energy simply wasn't there to do it; it set out for her eyes, but never reached them. Why, of all places, would it get stuck in her throat, though?

Neji's eyes widened as he realized the answer to his own question. All her life, Hinata had been self-conscious of her panic attacks and nervousness, especially her stutter. It wasn't uncommon for people to get hung up on a flaw they saw in themselves and allow it to stop themselves from achieving they were working for, and the Byakugan was no exception. Hinata couldn't activate her eyes because she wasn't letting her own power overcome the one thing she hated about herself over all else, likely because she felt like she could never overcome it under her own power.

Neji frowned in concentration as he thought about what he should do. Should he just come out and tell Hinata what was stopping her from activating her eyes? That was probably a bad idea; there was a very high chance it would backfire and end up making her more focused on her voice, rather than allowing her to bypass it. What, then, should he do?

 _Give her a taste of it_ , his inner voice suddenly supplied, his gaze locked on the pulsating ball of energy located at Hinata's throat. _Help her do it once, and she'll get hooked. Then you can teach her how to bypass her fear._

It was a fair enough plan. Neji gently leaned forward and pressed a finger against Hinata's throat, feeling her jump at the sudden contact but not lose her focus. The energy in her throat shifted toward his finger like it was a magnet, and he slowly dragged it upwards a little, watching as it pressed against the invisible barrier and pushed it back the tiniest bit.

"I want you to pay very close attention to me," he said quietly so not as to disturb Hinata's concentration. "No, just listen," he interjected quickly when she opened her mouth, worried about her concentrating on her vocal chords and losing focus, and she shut it again with a snap, nodding her head emphatically, her eyes still closed. "Don't say anything. Just focus on my finger here. Do you feel it?"

When Hinata gave another nod, Neji brushed his finger down her throat, watching the bobbing energy follow it. "Good, just like that. Focus on this, and nothing else. Don't think about your throat, or your mouth, or even your eyes. Just think about focusing all your power right where my finger is. Can you do that?"

Clearly confused as to the purpose of the exercise, Hinata frowned slightly, but nodded. Watching her carefully, Neji traced his finger up and down the side of her neck, tracing the power with his eyes as it bobbed up and down with his finger, pushing a little more height into its arc with every upward climb. When he tried to encourage it to go up higher, however, it got stuck again - albeit a little further up than before, but still trapped underneath an invisible barrier.

What more could he do to try to break through that barrier? Normally, the answer would to gradually diminish the person's perception of their own faults and have them overcome the self-consciousness on their own before attempting the Byakugan again, but Neji had been trying that for years with Hinata's stutter and made barely made any progress, so that wasn't an option, especially since he needed to smash through that barrier immediately, if only temporarily. Hinata could figure out later what to do to make the barrier disappear permanently, especially if she had the motivation of seeing the beautiful world only the Byakugan eyes could perceive.

Well, Neji supposed, he could always just go for brute force. Even in the most impossible of cases, sometimes a good head start could give the upper hand. Speed did overcome clearance, after all.

Very deliberately, Neji trailed his finger back down Hinata's neck, almost to her collarbone, then without warning, jerked it up to rest on her temple. Startled by the abrupt shift but still obediently concentrating on Neji's finger, Hinata refocused her energy on her temple next to her eye, the ball of pulsating blue power resisting just a second at the invisible barrier before it shattered through and engulfed her upper face in a pale internal glow.

"Now!" Neji instructed urgently. "Say it now!"

Either his tone or his words galvanized Hinata into action, because she jumped at his command, the word that would activate her eyes falling from her mouth, slightly stuttered but coherent enough to get the job done.

"Bya- Byakugan!"

Neji could tell that it had worked as soon as the word hit the empty air, and by the way Hinata sucked in a sharp intake of breath, he knew that she could tell, too. He watched her eyelashes flutter up to reveal her pale eyes, shining from within with a power only a Hyuuga could access, and as soon as her gaze fell on his face, closer to hers than it had been before, she let out a breathy gasp.

"It-it's b-beautiful, N-Neji…"

Unfortunately, the emotion of the situation caused her to stutter, and as soon as she was reminded of the reason why she had been unable to activate her eyes in the first place, the power centered behind her eyes went haywire and dissipated throughout her body once more, wrenching away her extra sight despite how hard she appeared to be holding on to it.

"You saw it, didn't you?" Neji asked quietly after Hinata stopped blinking, pulling his hand away from her temple and deactivating his own eyes. "What did you think-?"

He was cut off before he could finish his sentence by Hinata jumping forward and enveloping him in a hug so tight, he thought he wasn't going to be able to breath until she let go.

"Thank you," she whispered in his ear, her arms locking around his rib cage even tighter. "You don't know how much that meant to me. You proved to me that I really can do it, even if I can't do it by myself you. I'll never forget how beautiful it was, Neji, even if I only saw it for a second."

"That was the idea," Neji gasped out, trying desperately to breathe and finding himself failing miserably. "Do you think that you could let go now?"

"Oh-! Sorry!" Hinata released Neji from her bone-crushing hug, but didn't back far away, instead taking hold of his hands in her own. "All those colors, Neji, and the way they moved! Is that really what you see every time you use the Byakugan?"

Neji couldn't help but grin at her enthusiasm. "Yep, and sometimes more. Everything you were seeing originated from me, a living human, and with ghosts you can sometimes see more- things that can even tell you how they died if you pay enough attention."

"Really?" Hinata's eyes were wide and euphoric, excitement dripping from her tone. "So, what I was seeing, that was all your… what? Aura? Energy?"

"Power," Neji corrected, then added a little self-consciously, "and… emotional energy."

"Emotional… energy?" Hinata jerked back in surprise, almost as if she'd been shocked. "You mean… I was looking at your emotions?"

Neji couldn't help but look away from Hinata's wide, shocked gaze. "Yeah. That's why we don't normally do it in close quarters with others, because it's so invasive."

"So… you could see my emotions, too?"

Nodding a little guiltily, Neji replied, "Yeah. I could see yours."

"What did you see?"

The frank question threw Neji slightly off guard, especially when he saw the genuine curiosity in Hinata's eyes. "I saw a lot of balled up anxiety and nerves, mostly centered around here," he finally said, gesturing to her throat, and he saw her wince slightly. "But," he continued, hoping to soften the blow of his words somewhat, "I also saw a lot of determination. I have faith that you'll overcome it, Hinata- just as I always have."

"You really can tell all that, just by some swirls of color?" Hinata asked, her hands opening and clenching in her lap like she wanted to grab him again and force him to tell her everything- but she was too shy to do more than ask politely.

"It takes quite a bit of practice, but yes." Neji flashed her a smile. "What colors did you see for me? I could help you identify them."

Hinata bit her lip in thought. "Well, it was really quick, and there were like nothing I'd ever seen before, but I think there was a color that would be purple if purple was a warm color instead of a cool color…"

 _That would be me being proud of her…_

"...and one that was kinda bluey, but bright, not dark or navy-like, and shimmered like it was gilded…"

 _Affection, again for her…_

"...and I'm pretty sure the last one was the equivalent of pinkish, but with streaks of black through it…"

 _And that would be my sexual satisfaction- WAIT, WHAT?!_

Neji grabbed Hinata by the shoulders, shocking her into stopping mid-word, her mouth hanging open in what might have been a comical way in a less serious situation. "Are you sure that's what you saw?!"

Letting out a squeak, Hinata managed a yes, and Neji immediately dropped his hands from her side, feeling bad about scaring her, then let his face down into his hands. He was letting this whole situation with Shikamaru get out of hand. He had gone into it willingly and didn't regret the things they'd done so far, but if Hinata could see the effects of it - even if she didn't know what they meant - anyone else who looked could see it as well, and that was the dangerous part. The Hyuuga clan was a very traditional one, and had very strict rules about what they thought was appropriate behavior and what was not, especially before marriage.

Taking a few deep breaths to steady himself, Neji forced his head out of his hands so he could look at Hinata straight on, pulling a ragged smile over his bruised expression. Her pale eyes watched him with a mixture of fascination and nervous attention, as if she didn't know whether she should be afraid of him or for him.

"I'm sorry for shouting at you," he said as gently as he could with the tight emotions wound up inside him like a ball made of rubber bands stretched past their breaking point and threatening to break. "I just… it took me by surprise."

"Are you going to tell me? Whatever it was I saw that scared you so much?"

 _I'm not scared-!_ Neji almost retorted, but bit back the words before the came out because he had promised himself a long time ago that he would never lie to Hinata. In the end, he simply said, "No," and left it at that, turning away so he wouldn't have to see her disappointed expression.

A hand slamming onto the floor between them jumped Neji enough to make him jerk back and see Hinata, her face angry and her palm still on the floor.

"This is what I was talking about yesterday!" She cried in an uncharacteristic display of anger, her hand trembling against the ground. "I can help you like you've helped me, Neji, but only if you let me in!"

It pained Neji to crush her hopes and turn her down when she was offering him something that meant more to both of them than anything else - trust - but this was a problem that he couldn't involve her in. Shaking his head a little sadly, Neji told her as much.

"I'm sorry, Hinata. I appreciate it, I really do. It's just... this… this is one of those things I have to sort out on my own."

With a sigh, Hinata retracted her hand and sat back, a resigned look on her face. "I should have guessed as much. I'm still not much next to you, after all."

"Hinata, that's not-"

"It's okay, Neji." Standing up, Hinata flashed him a reassuring smile. "I knew what you meant. Someday, you can rely on me for everything, and while today I've come closer to that goal, I've still got a long ways to go. So don't worry about me, Neji. After all, I've got something I can tell everyone back home to stop them from talking about me behind my back now, thanks to you."

 _When_ , Neji wondered, watching Hinata stand up from her spot on the living room floor, _did Hinata get so strong?_

"Don't forget your umbrella," he warned automatically as Hinata took several steps toward the door and reached up on her tiptoes to pull her raincoat off the hook neck to the entrance.

When Hinata turned back to him, her face held the tiniest bit of sadness. "I won't. Well, I better head out. They'll be expecting me back soon, anyway." She turned to leave, then abruptly turned back, the light of remembering something in her eyes. "Oh, right. I was supposed to tell you that Father asked for you to come to the household tomorrow after our lesson. The elders want to speak to you about something. Should I tell them you can make it?"

 _The elders_? Neji could only think of three reasons why they would want to talk to him, and none of them were pleasant prospects. Still, a summons from the Hyuuga elders was not something to blow off lightly. He nodded. "Yeah, I can make it. Tell them I'll be there."

"I will." Hinata gave him one last smile before opening the door and stepping out into the drizzling rain. "Bye, Neji. See you tomorrow."

The door shut before he had the chance to say it back to her.

With a sigh, Neji let himself fall back to lay on the ground, his eyes unfocused and staring through the ceiling. Unthinkingly, he raised one hand and reached upwards as if to grasp something, perhaps the sun, hiding today behind a bank of clouds, or the clouds themselves, obscured from view by the ceiling. With the wakeup call he'd gotten that morning and the conversations with Hinata, he had a lot to think about, but even before he could let his mind relax enough to mull things over, he knew two things would fight their way to the forefront of his mind and stay there.

The first was that he was getting too close to Shikamaru. Not in a physical intimacy sense of the word, or an emotional sense, either - after all, he'd chosen to further both the night before with no qualms - but in the actual distance sense of the word. Shikamaru shouldn't have followed him to Seattle; it was too dangerous, especially for a ghost like him. It would only be a matter of time before someone sensed his presence, and then there would be a full scale witch hunt going on through the streets of the city, something Neji would even be forced to participate in. The safest thing for him would be to return to Konoha and pretend like all this had never happened.

The second was that Neji didn't want to let Shikamaru go.


	10. Silent Phone

Blah, this one is kinda short, but it's only been a few days so whatever. Hope everyone enjoys and see you next week, back to the regular update schedule!

Addi out

* * *

"Did you get my email? I sent you the link to two different scholarship programs, and one site that has tips for students who want to go to college but aren't sure if they can afford it. I thought you could look at them and decide which one you want to apply for."

Sasuke sat down at his desk, operating his mouse with one hand as he cradled his phone between his other shoulder and his cheek. The message in his inbox said the email had sent, so he nodded and leaned back in his chair.

"No, not yet- oh, wait, there it is!" Sakura's tone grew excited on the other end of the line as she scanned through the links Sasuke had sent and the brief descriptions of each he had provided. "Wow, these are great! How did you find them?"

"The scholarships came on my father's recommendation, but I found the other site myself when I was going through my own application process." Sasuke leaned back in his desk chair, trying to keep his smugness from his voice. "I thought it would be a great resource for you, so I included it."

"No, it's great! Thanks!" Sakura's voice drifted off as she started reading through the materials Sasuke had sent her on the other end of the line. "Alright, I'm going to look through all these. Was there anything else you needed to tell me?"

"Yeah, actually. I wanted to ask you if you had any teachers you knew of who you could ask for recommendations, because a couple of the scholarships need them."

"Sure, I know a couple, but school hasn't even started yet. It's still only August."

Leaning forward in his chair, Sasuke exclaimed excitedly, "Which is all the more reason to figure out everything now! Some of the scholarships are school-specific, and you need to apply by the first early decision deadline in early November to even be considered. Now, the applications are evaluated all together after a deadline and not on a first come, first served basis, but it still doesn't hurt to get in the top of the pile. Therefore, I think we should have all of the applications you plan to send in done by the middle of October."

"October?!" Sakura yelped so loudly in Sasuke's ear that he almost dropped the phone, and he had to bring it away from his ear, wincing. "Are you crazy? It's already August!"

"I thought you just said that it was only August," Sasuke teased lightly, then his tone turned serious. "I'm not kidding, Sakura. If I'm going to help you with this, we're going into it with no holds barred, and that means at top speed. Do you think you can keep up with that?"

"I… I'll try," Sakura said dubiously, her voice ringing cautiously through the connection. "I don't know, but I'll try."

"That's all you need to do." Sasuke nodded, pleased. "I'll let you go so you can finish reading what I sent you. Unless there was something else you wanted to ask me?"

"No, I think that was it. I'll look through these and decide which ones I want to apply for. Thanks again for doing this for me, Sasuke. I don't know how I can ever repay you."

"Ha!" Sasuke chuckled good-naturedly. "Let's see if you're still saying that after October rolls around."

"I look forward to it," she teased right back. "Bye, Sasuke. Talk to you later."

"Talk to you later," he echoed, and heard Sakura laugh lightly before a click told him she'd hung up.

The smile only remained on his face for a few more seconds before it slipped down his face like thick mud off a shirt treated with hydrophobic chemicals. Sakura was a wonderful girl who never failed to lighten his spirits, but after letting her go, Sasuke couldn't help but let himself slump back into the depression he'd been feeling ever since he'd heard the news that Itachi had left. Helping Sakura with her dream had, for a time, given him something else to concentrate on, but when he wasn't actively doing anything, like right now, the dim lethargy would start to creep over his body again, and he'd feel the urge to lay back down on his bed and ignore the world.

Just as he was about to give in to the base urge and let the darkness swamp over him again, Sasuke's phone rang. Glancing down at the caller ID, he saw that it was Sakura again, and a slight frown tugged at the corners of his mouth. Did she have a question about the materials he'd sent her? Or did she have something she'd forgotten to tell him? Either way, why had she decided to call and not text? These questions in his mind, Sasuke answered the call and held the phone up to his ear.

"Hello?"

Nothing. Abject silence. Not even the sound of breathing came through the phone line, and Sasuke's frown deepened. What was Sakura doing? Had he been butt-dialed, or was it a prank? Or, perhaps, had she already hung up, realizing the mistake before him? He pulled the phone away from his ear, glancing down at the screen to verify that the call really was connected, and Sakura's name glowed at the top of his screen, along with a time to show how long the call had been. Bringing the phone back to his ear, he listened harder, but was still unable to pick out even the sound of breathing on the other end, though he thought, now that he was paying attention, that he could very faintly hear the sound of laughter from a few rooms over.

Finally deciding that he'd had enough of the charade, Sasuke snapped into the phone, "Look, I don't know who you are or why you have Sakura's phone, but this isn't funny. Either start talking, or I'll hang up." He waited a good five seconds more, but still heard no sound from the other end of the line, so he snapped, "Fine. You had your chance."

Grimacing angrily, he disconnected the call and let his phone fall on his desk while his head fell into his hands. Well, he had one thing to thank the mysterious caller for: the irritation the incident had caused was just enough for him overcome the creeping dark depression that urged him to give up and galvanize his mind to focus on something other than Itachi.

Unsurprisingly, the issue his mind settled on to distract himself from his current situation was one that had been unconsciously nudging at the back of his thoughts ever since Sakura had told him of her own dream and he'd promised to help her achieve it. He'd been too afraid to act on his dream so far, but Sakura's determination had shown him that dreams were achievable, if only one decided to reach toward them.

It took quite a few minutes of staring blankly at his computer screen before he could work up the motivation and courage to open up an email to his academic advisor and start typing.

Halfway across the country, Naruto stared blankly at the screen of Sakura's phone, which he had grabbed as soon as she had left the room and stopped from falling asleep and locking. He knew she hadn't known he was listening while she'd spoken on the phone to Sasuke, but the fact that she could speak so jovially to him while the same pleasure was denied Naruto really stung. As badly as they'd fought and as hurriedly as they'd made up before he'd left Konoha, Naruto missed him terribly, and it hurt to hear him joke so casually with Sakura while he was standing right there.

So, in a moment of weakness, he'd pressed the redial button on the phone in his hand and called Sasuke back, desperate to even hear his voice. His heart had jumped at the first hello, and he'd launched into a tirade of how much he missed Sasuke without giving him a chance to answer any of his questions or even respond to anything he said. This continued for almost a minute before Sasuke's voice had cut sharply through the tirade, clearly irritated and having heard nothing Naruto had been saying.

" _Look, I don't know who you are or why you have Sakura's phone, but this isn't funny. Either start talking, or I'll hang up._ "

The harsh words and biting tone had shocked Naruto enough that he had frozen, the words about to leave his mouth trembling instead at the tip of his tongue, trapped by the tears that suddenly threatened to spill from his eyes. Unable to speak, he'd head Sasuke's voice again after a few seconds had passed.

" _Fine. You had your chance._ "

The call had disconnected, leaving Naruto still shocked speechless, staring down at the phone screen as it dimmed and then faded to black. He only noticed he was crying when a droplet of water splashed down from his cheek and landed on the screen before fading away into nothingness. Angrily, he swiped a hand across his cheek to dispel the remainder of the tears and threw the phone back where Sakura had left it.

He didn't know why he hadn't realized earlier that Sasuke wouldn't be able to hear him. After all, ghosts didn't appear in video and audio recordings and didn't show up in pictures- they even had no reflections, even when they were standing directly in front of a mirror. Therefore, there was no way his voice could have been picked up by the cell phone microphone and transmitted to Sasuke, even though the Uchiha was normally able to hear him.

Wiping his hands across his cheeks one last time to assure himself that no tears remained to accuse him of emotional weakness, Naruto pushed himself off the floor and floated through the ceiling, looking for one of their gradually diminishing group to harass someone living with.

"Kiba! Where are you? I wanna prank someone!"


	11. The Beginnings of 'Mist'

I'm back! Maybe I'll be able to go hursday and Sundays for a while; I've been on a roll!

Anyway, happy reading. Addi out!

* * *

"How have the other aspects been faring?"

"Fairly well - we have plenty of liquid assets, and our money has been laundered well, so we're quite stable financially. Our only unfortunate circumstance is our low numbers- but, then again, that may also be helping to keep our costs down, so it's a double edged sword."

"What are our numbers, then?"

"About ten in the inner circle, and another twenty informants and runners. We've downsized quite a bit since you left."

"I can tell that. Only thirty, though? I remember it being much larger. What happened? Police bust?"

"Unfortunately, yes, about five years back, and not soon after we were attacked by the gang who controls the territory directly south of us, the Ryuchi group. After taking the chickenshits who were scared enough to jump ship and abandon us in favor of the Ryuchi, they decimated our ranks. Other than the few pseudo-gangs of perhaps ten, the ones who are just a motley collection of violent young men gathering together for protection, we're the smallest gang on the east side of the city now."

"And we'd be the smallest organized gang in the whole city if not for the stupid Howling Wolves over on the west side. A similar thing happened to them several years before us, but they took it worse than us and they're down to about twenty members now."

"Ever since the raid and the attack, the late Boss always seemed like he was sick or too tired to do anything, and he was finally assassinated about a month ago. Since then, we'd been struggling to find new leadership before we located you again."

"Do you know who was behind the assassination?"

"No, though we expect it was the Lock group directly to our west. They were also threatened by the Ryuchi lately, and we suspect they're trying to absorb our remaining territory in a bid to remain independant against them."

"I see… Have you been able to find out how they did it, at least?"

"Again, I am ashamed to report that we have not. We do have another suspicion that it might have been an inside job, though we have no way of proving this either way because we were so short-staffed at the time- and still are."

"That's unfortunate. Do you think, if it was someone on the inside, they would try again now that I'm here?"

"We have no idea. It could have been a one-time revenge, for all we know, or it could have been an attempt to destabilize us. If that's the case, I would guess that they might try again, but not for a while."

"I agree. We're on too much of a high alert now, and any inside man would know it. They'd wait for us to get complacent before they struck again- if they're going to strike again. Again, all this is speculation and we have to proof to back any of it up, but it's the most likely scenario."

"Well, thank you for telling me, men- and Miru. I didn't mean any offense by that comment."

"None taken, Boss."

"Excellent. Well, I have one final question I wish to ask about this matter before we move on to other topics. Exactly how did my predecessor die?"

A moment of silence followed Kisame's question which each of the three people he had addressed seemed unwilling to break, before a quick "Gunshot to the head. The shot was silenced so we never heard it," was uttered into the stillness and silence, thick and unbreakable, fell once again. Itachi remained motionless off to the side as he had been sitting for the past half an hour, listening to them talk business and catch Kisame up on everything that had happened since he'd left all those years ago. Apparently, the trio had been doing the work of keeping the gang afloat since Kisame's father had died, and even before, when he had deteriorated so much that he couldn't do it himself. Their names, as they'd introduced themselves as in the beginning of the conversation, were Fuguki, Raiga, and Miru, one of the only women in the gang. Throughout the conversation, Itachi had gleaned much useful information from their words, but even more through their tones. He knew that no one was paying any attention to him, especially after Kisame had introduced him and explained that he was blind, and the careless underestimation was allowing him to observe their dynamics while at the same time being almost completely ignored. Someday, Itachi speculated, he could perhaps use that fact to scare some respect into them, but not now. Right now, the information he was gleaning vastly overshadowed any personal slight he might receive.

For example, though he hadn't been able to see which person had been speaking, Itachi had matched names to voices and had been able to track who said what during the conversation, and had gathered some interesting observations about the three members of the gang hierarchy. Miru, the single woman, spoke in a remarkably business-like manner, never an ounce of superfluous words or uncritical thought, which likely meant that she had cultivated such mannerisms in the hopes of reducing the amount she was looked down on as a woman in a male-dominated environment. In juxtaposition to her, the man known as Raiga was talkative, but colloquial almost to the point of rudeness in his manner or speech. The third member of the trio, Fuguki, had remained silent whenever possible throughout the answering of Kisame's questions, but by his tone of quiet authority whenever he did speak, mixed with the slightest hint of irritation, Itachi could tell that he was the one who had really been in charge while the gang had remained leaderless, and he was reluctant to give up that power. His clever deflections away from himself hid the fact fairly well, but having lost his sight had made Itachi's ears better at picking up minutest details like that in voices without the crutch of relying on facial expressions.

Finally, Fuguki's smooth voice broke through the silence, speaking for the first time in almost ten minutes. "If I may, Kisame, I'd like to enquire as to your… behavior. Our late Boss was your father, correct? Why are you treating his death with such… callus pragmatism? Do you feel nothing for him?"

Itachi didn't have to be able to see Kisame's face to know it would be covered in a mask of indifference to hide his internal fury. As the silence again stretched on to an almost painful length of time, he almost stood up to draw the attention to himself and away from Kisame, but he heard the rustling of cloth as Kisame folded his arms over his chest and stopped himself just in time to hear how Kisame was going to respond.

"That man gave up any rights to call himself a father years ago. I am taking charge of the group of people who once followed him to protect them and myself, nothing more. So, if you please, I would like to not discuss any further the matters of the dead and instead turn to those still among the living."

Now Itachi did stand up, pushing his chair back across the floor with a screech and breaking through the awkward silence that was threatening to swallow up the room. The motion drew everyone's attention to himself, and he could almost feel the trio's surprise as they realized they had forgotten he was in the room. This was one of the signals he and Kisame had worked out that morning before going to meet with the men - and woman - who had greeted them the night before: he would remain inconspicuous and silent during the meeting, but if the conversation started veering into dangerous territory, he would interrupt with a casual request, therefore disrupting an unfavorable atmosphere in hopes of altering it more to their favor. Itachi could feel Kisame's understanding directed at him before he even spoke, so he allowed himself to relax and play his part.

"I'd like to walk around for a while. Would you mind pointing out some landmarks for me?"

"Sure thing." Kisame stood up as well and walk to Itachi, taking hold of his arm and pointing at different places around the room. "There's nothing much in here besides the table, which stretches almost the length of the room. It's a long room, but narrow, so the walls stretching this direction are much longer than the ones this direction. There are two open doors there and there, another closed door there, and a potted plant in every corner. You think you got it?"

Nodding, Itachi shook off Kisame's hand and took a step forward. "Yes, thank you. I apologize for the interruption. Please don't mind me and continue with your meeting."

As he strode off toward the closest wall, Itachi could almost feel the weight of three suspicious gazes on his back, but he paid them no mind and instead reached a hand forward until his fingertips brushed against the barrier he was seeking. Eventually, Miru broke the silence again, bring the conversation back to finances, and in particular, medical bills. It seemed that recently a few of their boys had been jumped by some Locks during a job, and they'd managed to send them packing but one young man, a newer recruit named Juzo, had been injured and was now in the hospital. They had plenty of money to pay for his treatment, but after that money was gone they'd be running low on funds that could be used at places like the hospital; mainly, that the majority of funds they had left was unlaundered drug money and their primary source of money laundering had recently been busted by the police, so they needed to find a new source of money laundering, and quickly. Itachi tuned out the rest of that particular conversation as he had no experience in these things and had been incarcerated for so long that he wouldn't be able to recognize any of the groups or people they were suggesting anyway, instead focusing on making his way around the room and memorizing the length of the walls and the sides of the table.

His ears only perked up again when Fuguki interrupted Kisame once more, breaking into a long debate between him and Miru that he had been abstaining from for the last several minutes.

"So, Kisame, what changes in leadership do you plan on implementing around here?"

Itachi paused against the far wall, his hand finding the top of the potted plant Kisame had told him lived in this corner of the room. Its leaves, he noticed dimly, were drier and more crisp than the leaves on the other three plants.

"What do you mean, changes? Did you expect me to make ridiculous demands and ignore the good you've already worked here?" Kisame's voice rose angrily, causing Itachi's head to jerk up silently. "Did you think I would do away with all of you for fear of your skills? What kind of person do you take me for? I am not that heartless!"

Itachi quickly withdrew his hand from the plant and started across the room as quickly as he dared without attracting notice to himself, cursing his sightless vision and the fact that he was on the opposite end of the room from Kisame, unable to reach him before Fuguki spoke again.

"Your father was."

Itachi knew that comment would cause Kisame to detonate, and it had been carefully selected as such, so just before he exploded, he reached out and laid a hand on the shoulder of the man who had just spoken.

"I thought we agreed to leave the dead alone, Fuguki?"

Fuguki and the others jumped at Itachi's seemingly sudden appearance, letting out small cries that alerted him to their shock. Fighting to keep an amused smirk from curling up his lips, Itachi gripped Fuguki's shoulder tighter when the other man tried to pull away from him.

"Wh- where the hell did you come from?"

Now Itachi did allow himself to smile, but only slightly. "Why, I've been here the whole time; I never left. You really should be more observant of your surroundings, eh, Fuguki? What if I'd been an assassin come to do away with your new Boss?" He raised the hand not gripping Fuguki's shoulder and cocked his fingers into a gun shape, then aimed it where he knew Kisame to be. "Bang. He's dead. I may be blind, but I'm not deaf, and you four were making enough noise to wake the dead, let alone give away your position to the living."

"Itachi…" Kisame warned quietly, his confused tone making it clear that he didn't understand Itachi's actions.

"Yeah!" Raiga stood up angrily, his chair scraping back across the floor with an ear-splitting screech. "Don't threaten our Boss! I don't care who you are or what your relationship to him might be, I ain't gonna let you get away with it!"

Itachi inwardly grimaced at the young man's choice of vulgar vocabulary, but decided not to comment on it. "Relax: I'm not here to threaten or assassinate your new Boss; I was just making a point. No, I just wanted to give my opinion, that's all."

"Give your opinion!" Raiga sneered, marching up to Itachi and grabbing his collar, his fetid breath blowing rancidly against his nose, causing it to take everything Itachi had not to turn up his nose or gag. "What do you think gives you the right to speak?"

"Let go of him, Raiga," Kisame interjected tiredly. "Let him speak."

"Wha-!?" Raiga dropped Itachi in shock and rounded on Kisame. "But why, Boss?"

His voice turning sharp, Kisame snapped, "Do you remember my conditions for coming back with you? If I went, he was coming too, and that goes for this as well. Let him speak."

Raiga was clearly unhappy with the order, but he backed down and sat back in his chair, pulling it back to the table so the legs squeaked on the floor again. Trying not to look too smug at his pre-assured triumph, Itachi squares his shoulders - his hand tightening on Fuguki's shoulder, having never left it - and prepares to speak.

"I think Fuguki's right."

"What!?" Fuguki roared, jerking away from Itachi's grip.

Itachi angled his head downwards so his gaze would have rested on Fuguki's face if he'd still possessed his eyes, hearing the other man shiver violently at the eerie sensation. "Did you not expect me to take your side?"

"No, that's not… I didn't… what?"

Letting out a sigh, Itachi turned back to where he knew Kisame was standing, letting him look at his face and hoping that he would read between the lines of what he was saying and not let his anger blind him. "Of course, I don't agree with everything he's insinuating-"

"Insinuating!" Fuguki interjected angrily, but Itachi completely ignored him.

"-but I have to agree that he has a point. The previous Boss was assassinated because he was viewed as weak, because you all were viewed as weak. You said he was often ill and stayed in bed most of the time before he was killed, if I remember correctly? Kisame can't act like that if you want a level of safety that your late former Boss couldn't provide."

"How dare you speak about him that way!" Miru cried out angrily, slamming her hands against the table. "He was a great man-"

"The operative word being 'was'," Itachi cut in, folding his arms across his chest. "I don't doubt that in his prime, he was one of the most feared men in these parts. However, the fact remains that he is now dead, and unless all four of you - and everyone else in your group - wants to go the same way, I suggest you change _something_. It doesn't matter what, but the name and face of a Boss isn't enough. It has to be something that catches the attention of your rivals, that strikes fear into their hearts, that screams- you know, I just realized I don't actually know your name yet. What are you called?"

From his chair, Raiga snorted. "Typical. You have our colors, but you don't even know our name."

Miru's response was slightly more respectful, though she was clearly irritated with Itachi. "We're the Sword Ninjas- though," she broke off suddenly, her tone softening in curious remembrance, "if I remember correctly, that was the name our former Boss gave us when he took over because he decided that the name the gang had before wasn't menacing enough."

"What was that name?" Kisame asked eagerly, his chair squeaking as he leaned forward. Itachi carefully hid a pleased smile; it appeared that his approach had paid off.

"If I remember it correctly, it was 'Mist'," Fuguki said stiffly. "The gang was known as 'Mist'. They were known for their subtlety and insubstantiality, fading into the darkness as easily as the mist rising from the ocean."

"I see why he changed the name," Kisame commented with a terse laugh. "That would never have fit with his ideals or the image he wanted. He was too much into violence and bloodshed."

"And what kind of image do you want, Kisame?" Itachi asked quietly. He could hear gasps from the other three, probably marveling - or criticizing - his daring, but he kept his attention focused solely on Kisame.

"...I'd have to say," he said after a moment of deliberation, "if I had to chose, I'd prefer the subtlety over pure violence, but I won't make that arbitrary decision by myself. I was very young during the first name change, but I remember there being a lot of pushback and anger toward it, and there was a huge confrontation that had to be settled. I won't force people to do something like that if it's not what they want."

"But you would like it change it back, given the choice? The image… and the name?"

"If given the choice… yes, I think a new name would be the perfect way to get the fresh look that we need."

"I would have to say that I agree." Itachi gave a single curt nod. "Get everyone together and put it to a vote. If you lay it out the way you said it tonight, it's likely they'll agree with you."

"Now, wait a minute!" Raiga shouted, standing up again. "What give you the right to make a decision like that? You're not one of us!"

"Not one of you?" Itachi turned slowly to face Raiga, turning a cold sightless gaze on him. To his credit, he didn't shiver under the chilling stare, but he did take half a step backwards before steeling himself. "I would say that this-" he reached up and touched the bandana wrapped around his empty eyes "-would beg to differ. And you're right: I have no right to make a decision like that- _but neither do you_. So I suggest you shut up and let the one person in this room with the authority to make that decision speak." His face snapped to the side, focusing the attention on Kisame, and with a knowing smirk, asked purposefully, "Boss?"

The three people in the room who had never addressed Kisame as anything but Boss held their respective breaths as they waited for a response. Itachi could feel Kisame's gaze on him, trying to discern the hidden messages he was sending through code, before he stood up and addressed everyone with finality.

"Let's do it. As soon as everyone who drove us gets back from their detours, we'll gather everyone and ask. I'd like to thank them for their service, anyway."

"But, Boss-" Fuguki protested, but Kisame cut him off.

"I said," he repeated with more ice in his voice, "We're going to do it. When is everyone expected to be back?"

In a small voice, Miru said, "Tomorrow morning. The last pair should come in at ten."

"Then we'll set it for tomorrow evening. Make the arrangements." Kisame jerked his head to the doorway, the action visible to Itachi through the sound of his jacket rustling against his skin. "Now leave us."

"But Boss-"

"I said _leave us_. Now."

Miru stood immediately and scampered from the room, closely followed by Raiga, who went less eagerly but still left. After a few seconds, Fuguki stood up and started to file from the room as well, though it was clear he didn't want to go and was sour about it. Just before he reached the doorway, however, Itachi called out to him.

"Oh, Fuguki, I wanted to ask you something."

Itachi could almost see the irritation dripping from Fuguki's face as he turned around again. "What do you want?"

Sending the blandest smile his way that he could, Itachi said, "I just wanted to inquire as to who waters the plants in this room?"

"What?" He snapped waspishly, anger clouding his tone.

"Just answer the question," Kisame interjected tiredly, clearly wanting to get the conversation over with as soon as possible.

"Fine." Fuguki sniffed irritably. "One of the lackeys takes care of it. I don't know which."

"But each of them is watered the same amount, yes?"

"How the hell would I know; I don't water the damn things!" After this outburst, Fuguki quailed, presumably at a look from Kisame, then muttered, "Probably, yeah. I would assume so."

"I see." Itachi gave a curt nod, then pointed at the far wall. "And what room would be on the other side of that wall?"

"Why the hell would you need to know that?" Fuguki asked, his voice raising in anger again.

"Oh, just justifiable curiosity. After all, if I'm going to be living here, I should know my way around, yes?" Itachi widened his bland smile. "Indulge me, please."

"Fine!" Fuguki snapped, running an exasperated hand over his scalp with the soft sound of skin rustling over skin. "I think it's the old Boss's room."

"The one he died in?"

"Yes, the one he died in, God fuck it!" His tone lowering, he abruptly sneered, "Is that everything, Boss, or does your blind guard-dog have any more questions he needs to ask me?"

"No, I'm afraid the blind guard-dog is out of questions," Itachi said witheringly, turning his head to Kisame. "Kisame?"

"Yes, Fuguki, you can leave," Kisame echoed, and Fuguki let out an affronted sniff again, while still trying to retain a facade of respect.

"I'll take my leave then, Boss. Godspeed to you."

After the sound of his footsteps had faded from the room, Kisame sighed and sat down again at the table, laying his head down on his arms. "This is so much harder than I thought it would be," he moaned into the wood, his words muffled somewhat by the fabric of his sleeves. "I would never have agreed to it if I knew it was going to be like this!"

An indulgent smile gracing his lips, Itachi moved to lean his back against the table next to where Kisame was sitting, letting the fingers of the hand closest to him run through his hair. "That's why you have me. I stopped things from escalating, didn't I?"

"That you did…" Kisame brought his head up from the table, but didn't try to dislodge Itachi's fingers tangled in his hair. "Actually, I had a question about that. I know you said that you would only intervene if you sensed something bad might happen, and I'm glad you spoke up both times when you did, but why did you expose yourself? I thought you were going to use the ruse of being helpless a little longer than forty-five minutes."

"I had planned on that, but even the best laid plans must be flexible enough to keep up with sudden changes in environment. Besides, they still underestimate me, so it's no loss my image can't recover from, and they are only three of the people you will be having to deal with."

"Ugh, don't remind me." For a moment, Kisame sounded like he was going to lay his head back down on the table again, then he sighed and stood up, placing both hands palm down on the table and leaning forward as Itachi rested his back against the edge of the table, facing the opposite direction. "So," he continued in a low voice, "what's your analysis? Of them?"

"Hmm…" Itachi turned his face to the side so his mouth was close to Kisame's ear, speaking in a voice barely loud enough to carry to the man standing directly. "I'd say the most trustworthy one, or at least the most capable one, is Miru. It's obvious that's she's desperately trying to overcome gender stereotypes just to be here, and if you acknowledge her achievements without stating the fact that she's a woman, I think she would become unconditionally loyal to you."

"Okay, pay extra attention to Miru's achievements but don't talk to her as a woman; got it." Kisame nodded, the table creaking under his movement. "And the others?"

"Well, with Raiga it's hard to tell, but I think that given enough motivation he wouldn't betray you, at least. The problem is Fuguki." Itachi paused to listen around the room one more time before lowering his voice again to make sure they weren't overheard. "He's not happy, and I doubt there's anything you or I can do to change that. He obviously wants us gone; my guess is because he hoped that he could step into the position of Boss until the others decided to contact you. You'll have to be very careful around him."

Kisame sighed and turned around, leaning with his back against the table like Itachi was. "I kinda figured something like that was the case. God, this leadership thing is really more than I bargained for."

Leaning into Kisame, Itachi let his head fall against his shoulder. "Which, again, is why you have me."

"Mmm…" Kisame allowed the contact in silence for a moment before a question abruptly fell from his mouth again. "Oh, yeah, speaking of Fuguki, why did you ask him those questions? Just trying to throw him off?"

"No; those weren't even aimed at him in particular. I just wanted to know."

"Why?"

Biting his lip, Itachi drew away from Kisame so the other man could look at his face. "Kisame, do you remember the day we first met, when I was talking to… Button… and she had a message to pass on to you before she faded, and then I told you about my family's powers?"

"Yes," Kisame answered slowly, a frown audible in his voice. "But I don't see what that has anything to do with potted plants."

"It doesn't- not on the surface, anyway." Itachi drew his left hand up his right arm and gripped onto his shirtsleeve for balance. "The potted plant in that corner is drier than the other three, even though they've been - assumedly - watered the same. Any not just any only dry, either- that plant is going to be dead within a weak. Since they all have the same amount of water to consume, it has to be something else that's affecting that plant, and sure enough, when I touched it earlier, I felt something. It was faint, but it was still something. That's why I asked what was on the other side of the wall."

"What… what are you talking about?" Kisame whispered, clearly understanding where Itachi was going and powerless to stop the flow of information.

"I'm talking about spectral energy, and the fact that I felt it from the room your father died in." Itachi took a deep breath before continuing. "I'm sorry, Kisame, but there's a very real possibility that your father's angry ghost is still here, seeking revenge for his murder."


	12. Namaki

Wow, this chapter took entirely too long to write. There's a lime (warning!) though, so there's that.

* * *

"I see you're back again."

Shikamaru didn't have to look behind him to know the identity of the person who spoke. "Is there a problem with that?"

"No, not really. Unless you're looking for a problem." The female Hyuuga ghost sat down next to Shikamaru on the edge of the ring around the top of the space needle, tucking her feet tucked up underneath her. "But judging by your performance yesterday, that's not what you're looking for."

"You're right." Shikamaru turned to the Hyuuga ghost and regarded her with a critical eye, while she kept her gaze forward and out towards the horizon. Behind them, the nonsensical chatter of a hundred people pushing for the best selfie spots floated out from behind the barrier that kept them from falling to the ground. "I'm not here for trouble. I'm here for information."

"Information, huh…?" The Hyuuga ghost shook her head, her gaze still fixed on the faraway horizon. "If it's information you're after, you'll have to go someplace else. I won't tell you what you want to know."

"But you haven't even heard what I wanted to ask you!" Shikamaru protested warmly, but his eyes were coldly calculating.

"I've heard enough to know that what you want to know I can't tell you." Finally, the Hyuuga ghost glanced sideways at Shikamaru, but her face remained in profile. "You've wasted your time coming back here, shadow boy. Leave me be."

Shikamaru's eyes narrowed though his tone remained jovial. "Leave you? But that would be impolite! I've only just arrived! And besides, I'm not asking for the dread secrets of your clan, just a few paltry scraps of information- like, say, your name."

"Ha!" The ghost stood up, towering over Shikamaru's seated form, and thrust an angrily trembling finger down towards him. "Paltry, as you call it, or no, my name is one of the few secrets I will never give away, for my own safety! I am running out of patience, boy! Get thee gone before I send you packing myself!"

Slowly standing up, Shikamaru shoved his hands inside his pockets and placed himself in a direct line between the Hyuuga ghost and the sun, so he would appear to be nothing but a shadowy silhouette without a face against the backdrop of light. "'Get thee gone?' Really? What century did you die in?" He laughed without humor, knowing that the ghost had no way of seeing the expression on his face. "And do you really want to threaten me?" He continued in a lower voice, watching her face as she squinted in the pale light of the sun just barely peaking through the clouds. "After what happened the last time you tried?"

Her already pale face went even paler at the memory of the altercation that had taken place the day before, but to her credit, the ghostly Hyuuga didn't back down. "If you're so desperate for answers, why not go ask your little live Hyuuga friend, huh? I'm sure _he_ would be able to answer your questions."

"It's funny that you should mention him… considering that he's actually the reason why I'm here." Shikamaru took a deliberate step to the side, allowing illuminating light to creep between him and the ghost he was conversing with and chase away the shadows from his face. "As per your request, I did not tell him about you, but both you and him separately brought up the dangers of the so-called "elders" of the Hyuuga family- particularly pertaining to ghosts. If I am to put him in danger merely by being beside him, I want to know how best to shield him from that danger as well."

"And so you want information," the ghost Hyuuga sneered at him, her lip curling up in distaste. "To protect your _precious little friend_ \- if he even exists. Give it up, brat. I'll never tell you what you want to know."

"If he exists?" Shikamaru's voice lowered dangerously again as he felt rage start to boil his blood. " _If_ he exists? The one man I would follow across the entire country, the one man who beat me at my own game, the one person still alive that I've ever found I care about- and you doubt his existence?!"

"You've never told me his name!" the ghost shot back, though she was starting to look nervous.

"And you've never told me yours- is that a reason for me to doubt your existence!?"

"But I am standing right in front of you!" The ghost cried, throwing her arms open wide.

Taking a step closer, Shikamaru locked his gaze onto the other ghost's, and this time he saw her falter and take a step back at what she saw in his eyes. "And I am standing right in front of you. Is that a reason to doubt my word?"

Her eyes widened slightly in fear before narrowing again as she tried to hide the fear from him, but Shikamaru had already seen it. Instead of calling her out on it, however, he let her think, watching the thoughts run through her head through the windows in her eyes with such clarity, he could have probably guessed them verbatim.

"Tell me his name," the Hyuuga ghost ordered, folding her arms over her chest. "Tell me his name, and I'll answer a question for you- but I reserve the right to refuse to answer it for my own protection."

"Deal." Shikamaru held his hand out for the Hyuuga ghost to shake, but pulled it back at the last second when she reached for it. " _If_ I get to ask a second question if you refuse to answer the first, and a third if you refuse the second, and so on until you answer a question of mine."

By the irritated flash in the Hyuuga ghost's eyes, Shikamaru knew that this had been her plan, but the irritation quickly dispersed and she extended her hand further. "Deal. Name first."

"Question first," Shikamaru countered, watching her face as anger started to cloud her cheeks and force her teeth together.

"Tell me his name, or I won't answer your question."

"Please- we both know you have absolutely nothing over me that could make me give in to that demand." Shikamaru flashed her a disarming smile at the same time as his hand turned into a vice grip around hers. "Face it: you need his name. You need to know if there's someone out there who's willing to make the same mistakes you made, the mistakes that got you killed, and you need to know if he's going to pay the same price you paid for your mistakes. So answer my question. You have no leverage to convince me otherwise."

The ghostly Hyuuga looked down at the ground hundreds of feet below their floating bodies, breaking eye contact with Shikamaru to hide her sudden vulnerability- which, of course, he saw. "But… how do I know you won't leave after you get your answer and leave me without mine?"

"You don't."

Shocked eyes swung up to confront his own, but Shikamaru only smiled at her and gave her hand a firm squeeze. "But I've heard it said that a man's word is as good as his handshake."

A weak smile flashed across the ghostly Hyuuga's face. "I've heard that too." She pulled her hand free from the handshake and turned away from him. "Fine. Ask me your question."

"Hm…" Shikamaru took a step backward and put both his hands behind his head, as if he was considering a question he'd already, in truth, decided on. "Who was the person who pushed you?"

The Hyuuga ghost stiffened in profile. "Pass."

"Alright then… what did you do to earn such a death?"

"...Pass."

"Well, aren't you being difficult… let's see…" Shikamaru rubbed a falsely thoughtful hand against his jaw. He had guessed that those particular questions would be ignored, but it was often the actions that accompanied words rather than the words themselves that spoke the loudest. "What about… the rules the Hyuuga family has about interacting with ghosts?"

"Pass."

"Pass?" Shikamaru couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. He'd figured that she would have answered that one, if only because she'd hinted at the rule in question when he'd seen her the day before.

"Pass," she repeated, crossing her arms over her chest. Her clothes billowed about her, against the flow of the wind. "And just so you know, I'm not going to answer any questions about Hyuuga rules or traditions. I may have been cast out, but I am still bound by the codes of secrecy I took as a child."

Well, damn. Shikamaru had been hoping to get at least something from her that would help him decide what he could do lessen the burden Neji was shouldering by himself, the burden of the rules and expectations laid out before him. Though, he thought suddenly, he had been trying to get information and form his own opinions from that information- why not, instead, get the analysis straight from the source?

Carefully choosing his words, Shikamaru asked, "If I was trying to prevent any of the things that happened to you from happening to my… friend, what would you advise me to do? And before you say 'stay away from him'," he added when she opened her mouth, cutting her reply off preemptively, "that's not the kind of advice I'm looking for. I know your opinion about that already, but I'm afraid it's not an option."

"Not an option?" The ghostly Hyuuga's eyes narrowed. "What exactly is your purpose with that boy?"

"Well, I believe that's none of your business."

Shikamaru's abrupt answer shocked the ghost, but she got over it quickly, her gaze raking up and down his steadfast stance, from his steady eyes to the arrogant tilt of his hip. "Alright," she finally conceded, sitting back down on the edge of the platform and patting the metal next to her. "This one I can answer. Come; sit next to me."

Hiding his eagerness with deliberately slow footsteps, Shikamaru strode up to the ghost and sat down next to her, following her gaze to the faraway horizon. After several seconds ticked away in silence, he couldn't contain his impatience any longer and sniffed, "Well?"

"...Don't get caught."

Shikamaru waited a few seconds, expecting more, before he realized that was all she was going to say. "'Don't get caught?' That's it? That's all you have to say? Jesus, I could have come up with that on my own!" He snapped before he could rein in his irritation.

"I'm serious, shadow brat." The Hyuuga ghost turned to glare at him for putting so little faith into her advice. "Don't get caught. Not just don't get caught together, but don't get caught period. Never let anyone know you exist, let alone that you're staying in this city. Seattle is a death trap for ghosts like you. One misstep, and you'll find yourself snapped up by the Hyuuga watchdogs, and no one likes it in the belly of that beast."

"...I see." Shikamaru stood up. "Very well. I will take your advice to heart. Well, it's getting late, and I have someplace to be tonight-"

"Wait!" The Hyuuga ghost jumped up as well, panic in her eyes. "You haven't told me his name yet! We had a deal!"

"Don't worry; I was getting to that. I'm not the kind to go around breaking his promises." Shoving his hands into his pockets, Shikamaru turned to the sun again, watching its pale presence get swallowed up by the angry rain clouds that were gathering over the city once more. "His name is Neji. He's young, in his early twenties, so I doubt you'd know him. You died a long time ago, if I'm not mistaken, before he was even born."

"Neji…" The Hyuuga ghost narrowed her eyes in thought briefly, then shook her head. "No, I don't know him. Still… it's nice to know someone like me still exists… though he is playing a dangerous game. Good luck to both of you, shadow brat, and remember what I said. Don't get caught."

"I don't plan on it," Shikamaru answered before gathering a few shadows around his feet. "Thanks for the advice."

"Don't come back. You're more trouble than you're worth."

A smile of true amusement pulled up the corners of Shikamaru's mouth. "So are you, Hyuuga ghost."

"It's Namaki."

For a moment, Shikamaru didn't understand the ghost's words, then his eyes widened. "Nama...ki…?"

"Namaki Hyuuga. It's my name." The Hyuuga ghost - Namaki - turned towards Shikamaru and gave him a small smile. "Not that anyone would still remember it. But still… Now skidaddle, shadow brat."

"Shikamaru," Shikamaru corrected with a light smile.

"Whatever. Leave me alone, Shikamaru-brat. You've made as much excitement around here in the past two days as I've seen in the past twenty years, and I don't think Seattle can handle any more of it. Just try not to upset the balance around here too much, you hear me?"

"I'll do my best," Shikamaru promised, silently commanding the shadows around his feet to start swirling. "Goodbye, Namaki Hyuuga. I hope I never see you again."

He was gone, sinking into the shadows that swam about his body, before Namaki could look at him again, leaving her as alone at the top of the Space Needle as if she'd never spoken to him at all. Her wide, confused eyes searched around the bridge for several seconds, taking in everything from the live people chatting and snapping selfies behind the safety railing to the seabirds flying overhead, but found nothing. With a shake of her head, she gave up the search and sat back down on the platform, watching the clouds eat up what remained of the sun as the sky prepared itself to rain.

"And the same to you, shadow-brat."

* * *

Across the city, Neji stared down at the water running down his body and swirling briefly around his feet before disappearing down the drain, his eyes hollow with introspection. He had been playing a dangerous game, the thrill of hiding an illicit relationship from the elders giving him more pleasure than he ever could have anticipated, but the game had disappeared before he'd realized, pulling his feet out from underneath him, and now he didn't know what to think. He'd known what he was getting into and didn't regret any of the things that had happened with Shikamaru so far, but there was a limit to what could happen before something more tangible than lust got involved. Being who he was, he knew how badly a relationship like theirs - interdimensional as well as complicated in other ways - could end.

Perhaps Shikamaru understood this too, and that was why he hadn't allowed Neji to reciprocate his actions the night before. Neji's teeth gritted at the thought, his fist tightening automatically. What if he had pushed Neji away because he thought they were getting too close, because he didn't want to be too attached when the time came for him to… to…

Neji cut that thought off before it could finish, tipping his head back so the spray from the shower nozzle hit him directly in the face. The harsh flow drove the unpleasant, prickly thoughts to the back of his mind, replacing them with cool logic instead. Shikamaru had followed him across the entire country with no expectations besides a chess set, carefully watched him for a week before making a move, and even changed fundamental aspects of his personality - or tried to, at least - to make Neji more comfortable, and if there was anything Neji had learned about the phantom during their time in Konoha, it was that, while he wasn't quite as lazy as he tried to convince everyone else he was, he still didn't like to waste energy and wouldn't have done everything he had in the past week and a half if he wasn't invested in it somehow; that's just how he worked.

Running his hands through his wet hair, Neji shook off thoughts of Shikamaru entirely. This wasn't the time or place to deal with those kinds of thoughts; he had to focus on straightening out his aura before his meeting with the elders the next day, or there was a chance Shikamaru would be discovered through his turbid emotions, and if that happened, the game he was playing would quickly turn into a nightmare. No, it would be best to force his mind into a pre-meditative state to clear up the colorful stains to his aura before they grew any bigger-

"Hello, Neji."

Neji suddenly stiffened as a familiar presence exploded from the shadows behind him, sending threads of spectral energy throughout the shower. He could feel heat start to flood his cheeks in scarlet mortification, but was unable to move as Shikamaru coughed delicately behind him.

"Well, this is awkward. I swear I wasn't paying attention when I teleported and I didn't break in on your shower on purpose. Though," he continued with the hint of a devilish smile in his voice, "now that I'm here, I don't really want to leave. Nice ass, by the way."

The last comment pushed Neji over the edge, and he spun around with flaming cheeks to confront his would-be assaulter, covering the part of his anatomy Shikamaru had just complimented. However, he recognized his mistake when he saw the expression on the phantom's face, like a cat who had stretched out in the sun for a leisurely nap and woken up to find a small bird perched, asleep, directly atop his nose, and he realized that he'd just given Shikamaru an even more embarrassing view. His mouth falling open but unable to utter a coherent syllable, Neji grabbed the first thing he could find, which turned out to be the shower curtain, and yanked it in between them to hide his body from Shikamaru's hungry and amused gaze.

"Wha… y… you… Get the fuck out of my shower!"

"Now, Neji," Shikamaru admonished almost gleefully, his eyes gleaming predatorily and his arm wrapping around Neji's back to pull him closer, his hand wandering further downward than Neji would have liked. "You'll get the floor wet if you do that. Besides, it's not as if I haven't seen you like this before."

"You haven't!" Neji hissed, trying to escape the wandering hand exploring his backside, but in doing so only succeeding in pressing his pelvis against Shikamaru's, their bodies separated only by the thin material of the shower curtain and the insubstantial fabric of Shikamaru's clothes. "You've seen me shirtless, not naked! This is completely different!"

"Neji, I gave you a blowjob last night."

"I still had my pants on!" Neji jerked away from Shikamaru's body, only to grind himself back harder on the hand groping him quite cheekily. "I just- don't like being naked in front of people! That's all."

Suddenly, Shikamaru seized Neji's chin in a vice grip forcing him to look in his abruptly dark and serious eyes. "This fear isn't the result of any kind of past trauma, is it?"

"N-no!" Neji quickly shook his head, dislodging Shikamaru's hand from his jaw. "No, nothing like that's ever happened to me. It's just because of my upbringing, what was proper being drilled into me from a young age."

"Good." Shikamaru's eyes went dark, like twin pools of shadow where the iris was indistinguishable from the pupil, and Neji found himself sucked into them. "Because if that was the case, I'd have to go find them and end them myself."

The words shocked Neji enough that he forgot for a moment the position they were in. "End… end them? Like… _kill_ them?"

"It's not the first time I've done something like that."

Right; Shikamaru was so passive all the time around Neji that he had forgotten for a while that he'd seen active combat, and as such, had likely been on the giving end of many a death blow before he had received his own. The idea of him purposefully ending a life, however, hadn't stuck with Neji before, though it must have happened. Unable to help himself, Neji shivered at the thought, then quickly turned the conversation away from such dark topics.

"Well, if we've got that settled, would you mind _getting the fuck out of my shower now?!_ "

"Hmmm…" Shikamaru's eyes lightened so his pupil was distinguishable from his iris, but they regained the devilish glint from before. "No, I don't think I will. I'm not one to waste as perfect an opportunity as this."

"Perfect opportunity for wha- ah!" Neji tried to snap but broke off in the middle to moan when Shikamaru grabbed his ass and squeezed, and at the same time pulled him forward so his pelvis made rough contact with Shikamaru's hip.

"The perfect opportunity to finish what we were doing this morning before your damned alarm clock interrupted us." Shikamaru traced his nose across his captive's forehead, and Neji couldn't help but shiver as his body remembered the physical promises of that morning and the pleasures of the night before, racing ahead of his mind and demanding more. Well, when he put it that way, the offer seemed a lot more tempting… even in face of his current state of undress. "What say you?"

Neji closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of Shikamaru's face so he could think without distractions. He really needed to clear his aura of the tell-tale signs of intimate spiritual interaction before the next day's appointment with the Hyuuga elders, and that meant staying away from Shikamaru long enough to get his aura back into order… but then again, his aura was already stained; what more damage could one more round do? And Shikamaru was right; he had basically seen him naked already… And who was he kidding; he was already turned on by Shikamaru's pointed groping… His decision made, Neji let his eyelids flutter open, his grip on the shower curtain slackening.

"I say… you're still wearing too much clothes. I feel underdressed."

The catlike grin on Shikamaru's face widened, and he pushed Neji back against the shower wall without preamble, dragging the only barrier between them aside. Neji let himself be forced out from under the spray from the nozzle until the wet skin of his bare back pressed against the chill shower wall, causing a shiver to go up his spine that ended in a gasp through his parted lips that Shikamaru swallowed by pressing his mouth over Neji's before it made it out into the open air. His hands bunching in the wet hair at the nape of Neji's neck, the phantom kissed him fiercely, keeping him pinned down with a control Neji didn't want to admit excited him. Not to be outdone and remembering his earlier complaint about how Shikamaru was wearing too much clothes, Neji reached downwards and ran his hands along the phantom's stomach, underneath his shirt, finding the fabric still surprisingly dry, even though he was standing directly under the shower spray.

Realizing what Neji wanted, Shikamaru broke contact and stepped backwards, pulling his shirt over his head and letting it disappear into a wisp of shadow that dissipated among the falling drops of water. Speaking of drops of water, Neji found himself watching, fascinated, as the spray from the showerhead poured all around Shikamaru - and seemingly through him - but left his body completely dry. Enamored by the sight, Neji reached out and ran a hand across Shikamaru's stomach - this wasn't his death form, but was obviously from a time after he had joined the military, judging from his toned physique that left Neji feeling slightly jealous - watching the water from his hand collect against the phantom's skin but the water from the spray above him pass through him completely. Grinning at Neji's interest and confusion, Shikamaru grabbed Neji's hand and pressed it to the middle of his chest, showing off the damp handprint it left behind.

"Bet you've never kissed someone who could do _that_ before, now have you?"

"Well, it's not as if I go around making it a habit to kiss everyone I know," Neji sniffed, though he couldn't deny that he was impressed and his hand itched to press against that rough skin once again.

Something dark that might have been possessiveness flashed through Shikamaru's eyes, though he leaned in too quickly for Neji to have absolute certainty in his prediction. "Enough idle chatter. We have better things to do."

"That we do," Neji managed to gasp out before Shikamaru cut him off once again with his lips.

The phantom's knee slipped between Neji's legs, pushing them open and forcing him to balance his weight between the wall he was leaning against and the arms that held him up. Small shivers of discomfort and self-consciousness slid down Neji's spine when Shikamaru's hands began to roam over his damp and entirely naked body, but he shoved them down a far as they would go until they all but disappeared. His hand scrabbled against the wall, feeling around blindly, behind him until he found what he was searching for and gave it a quick twist. At once, the flow of water dousing them slowed to a drizzle and then stopped, and Shikamaru pulled back to give Neji a confused glance.

"What was that for?"

"I pay for every drop of water that goes down that drain, thank you very much," he tried to snap, but he suspected the effect was ruined by his breathless voice and cheeks that were flushed from more than the hot water. "I refuse to be wasteful. Don't you know how bad of a drought California's in right now? We wouldn't want to give anyone the impression that we - or anyone we represent - don't care about the environment, now do we?"

Shikamaru only shook his head, his expression torn between amusement and irritation. "I can't believe you're standing in front of me, naked, and lecturing me about water conservation."

"Priorities, Shikamaru. We all have them. Mine just so happen to include conserving the resources of our planet for future generations."

A dark gleam in his eyes, Shikamaru leaned closer, almost close enough for the tip of his nose to brush against Neji's. "Then it's a good thing I'm already dead and don't give a damn about the planet. I can bring this conversation back to the most important topic: the fact that I have your deliciously naked and willing body pressed up against mine, and I can tell that you're _very_ turned on right now."

"Delicious? Is that really the adjective you'd use to describe me right now?" Neji glared at Shikamaru at the same time as he wrapped his arms around his neck, drawing him closer and slightly ruining the effect of the angry gaze. "I'm soaking wet, Shikamaru, and I feel like I look like a drowned river rat. How is that in any way seductive?"

"That, Neji, I am just going to have to prove you wrong on." Shikamaru leaned in even closer so his lips rested right next to Neji's ear, his breath ghosting over Neji's damp neck and causing an aroused chill to go down his spine. "Water has several _delightful_ properties that make situations like this even more… _scintillating._ For example…" Here, he allowed his hand to slide down Neji's back and regain its former perch on his ass, then, too quick for Neji to counter, he caressed a finger against a sensitive place he'd never been touched in before. "Water reduces friction."

Neji barely heard the words Shikamaru had uttered; his whole body stiffened at the alien sensation of Shikamaru's finger gently probing against his entrance. His mouth fell open and panting gasps escaped his shuddering body without decorum as the finger shifted, and Neji found himself unconsciously clinging to Shikamaru's torso.

"Is that too much?" The phantom whispered in Neji's ear, causing his eyes to squeeze shut and another heated chill to run down his spine with thickening arousal.

"Mm-m… ah!" Neji's fingers dug mercilessly into Shikamaru's shoulder as he squirmed, caught between the finger probing his ass and the pressure of the phantom's torso against his pelvis. "Can't… I ca… can't…"

"You can't what, Neji?"

"Can't… I can't… take it…"

"Do you want me to stop?"

A pregnant pause hung in the air for a few seconds before Neji curled his arms tighter around Shikamaru's neck, his eyes fluttering open to take in the phantom's heated expression. "...N-no…"

"Good." Without warning, Shikamaru pushed Neji back against the shower wall again, shocking him by grabbing his leg and bringing it up to wrap around his waist. "Because after seeing that expression, I don't know if I'd be able to stop."

"Mnh!" Neji gasped when he felt his leg being hoisted up to wrap around Shikamaru's waist, instinctively clinging tighter to him. The position opened him up further, and he gasped again when Shikamaru's finger pressed harder against his entrance, almost pushing inside of him. "Shika… ma… ru…!"

"Do you like that?" The phantom whispered coyly in Neji's ear, then dragged his lips down the side of his captive's neck so the rumble of his voice collected in the hollow of his neck and sent delicious shivers all over his body. "You're trembling, Neji."

Neji was trembling- in fact, his entire body was shaking like a leaf in a violent storm. The new and somewhat alarming - though not as alarming as it was arousing - sensation of Shikamaru's finger almost inside him had him completely at the phantom's mercy, and Neji didn't know whether or not he should be angry at his traitorous body for how _good_ it felt. He whimpered, burying his face against the neck Shikamaru presented him as he rocked his body first forward, squeezing his erection between their naked and wet torsos, then backward, trying to urge the finger currently teasing him to take the plunge and press inside him.

Shikamaru grinned and teasingly circled the entrance to Neji's ass, not quite going where Neji wanted him to go. "For someone who was embarrassed to be naked in front of me a minute ago, you've done quite the about-face."

"Quit teasing me!" Neji snapped, slamming an open fist against Shikamaru's shoulder. "Hurry up and stick it- ah!"

His voice escalated from his normal pitch to one several octaves higher as Shikamaru gave his finger just enough pressure to probe beyond the entrance to Neji's ass and press inside him. He didn't push it in far, just barely past the first knuckle, but the alien experience of a foreign intrusion in his ass made Neji yelp, clinging onto Shikamaru's shoulder hard enough that his fingernails dug into his flesh and left half-moon shaped dents in his skin. His legs shaking, Neji suddenly found himself very glad that Shikamaru was supporting the majority of his weight, or he might have found himself on the floor of his shower instead of pressed against its wall.

"Is this what you wanted?" Shikamaru asked in a headily rough voice, moving his finger just the tiniest bit inside Neji and dragging a wanton moan from his unwilling throat. "I'll take that as a yes."

"It's a y-yes!" Neji gasped when Shikamaru's finger delved a little deeper inside him, moving as if searching for something. "D-definetly y-yes!"

"I see," Shikamaru murmured in a crafty voice. "Well, if you like that, let's see how much you'll like _this_."

Neji's breath caught in anticipation at the promise in Shikamaru's words, and his body tensed in preparation for what might come next. When several seconds ticked by and no new wave of sensation swept over him besides the feeling of Shikamaru's finger moving methodically deeper inside him, however, Neji let out a hiss of frustration.

"Li… like what-t?"

"Just give me a second to find it," Shikamaru muttered, his finger still moving exploratorily inside Neji's ass.

"H-how will you know when-n you've f-found it?"

"Oh, trust me, Neji," Shikamaru retorted, and Neji could hear his grin in his voice even if his face was pressed against the ghost's neck and he couldn't see his expression. "I'll know, and you will too."

All of a sudden, Shikamaru's finger brushed up against something inside Neji's body and he saw stars, literal specks of light dancing on the other side of his shower curtain. His entire body tensed up like the strings on a violin - or a viola - and he let out a cry, his back arching unconsciously and his erection driving into Shikamaru's stomach. The culmination of the erotic sensations from his starving, heated cock sandwiched between his own damp stomach and Shikamaru's more insubstantial one and the finger pressing that damnably arousing place inside his ass was bringing him almost to the edge of an orgasm. The muscles in his stomach clenched, his hands spasmed open and closed, his head jerked backwards, hair sticking to his back in wet clumps- it was too much and not enough at the same time.

"Found it," Shikamaru murmured darkly against Neji's throat.

Found it, indeed. Shikamaru hadn't been kidding when he said Neji would know; he doubted if he could ever _un_ know the sinfully delightful feeling of that finger brushing that spot located shallowly inside of him. His nerves were so overwhelmed with sensation that he couldn't decide whether he should rock backwards, driving Shikamaru's finger deeper inside of him, or press forward and stimulate his mostly ignored erection by driving it between their closely pressed bodies.

Luckily, Neji didn't have to chose, because Shikamaru pulled him closer, driving his finger deeper inside of Neji and strangling his erection between their two wet bodies at the same. Slowly, Shikamaru started to pump his finger in and out of Neji's ass, brushing that erogenous spot on every thrust, and Neji gasped, his entire body tensing, the chords in his neck standing out in sharp relief as his head tilted back. Covering Neji's open mouth with his own, Shikamaru swallowed all the sounds he made and thrust his finger harder, deliberately pushing against that spot that made the inside of the shower look like the Milky Way galaxy swimming in front of Neji's eyes.

In a moment of semi-clarity in between finger thrusts and twitches of his neglected cock, Neji realized that he was only feeling, not giving anything back to Shikamaru for the wonderful sensations searing through his body, so he forced his arms to leave their locked position around the phantom's neck and travel over his body instead. One of his hands trailed down Shikamaru's chest until it rested over a firm pectoral muscle and the other brushed over the skin of his back, traveling down to the top of the waistband of his pants - which Neji found, in his pleasure-addled state, to be extremely unfair, since he was completely naked. In a subtle but firm rebuke, Shikamaru let go of the leg he had forcibly wrapped around his waist - almost causing Neji to overbalance without the source of support - and grabbed the wrist that had made it to the top of his pants, bringing it back up to wrap around his neck.

A little hurt by the rebuttal, Neji dug the fingernails of the hand resting on Shikamaru's chest into his skin, but not hard enough to make him withdraw; the storm of pleasure that was wracking his body was at stake, after all. It was soon driven from his mind, however, when Shikamaru surprised him - likely to distract him from the tipsy anger in his system - by stretching him a little more adding a second finger in with the first.

The two fingers worked together, one retreating while the other was pressing forward, sending a constant stream of pleasure coursing through Neji's body. He knew that he wouldn't have been able to hold back the sounds trying to rip themselves from his throat if Shikamaru's mouth didn't still catch them all instead, his tongue winding around Neji's own as if trying to map out the inside of his mouth to his tonsils. Unable to stop himself, Neji squeezed his eyes shut, turning away from the lights show dancing around him - was it in his head, or real? - to watch the dark at the back of his eyelids, which, miraculously, somehow served to make the pleasure flooding his body intensify, even though he thought he'd already reached the peak.

The new peak turned out to be the final one. At a flash of heat in his stomach uncoiling into a familiar tension, Neji tried to push Shikamaru away, to warn him of what was coming, but the phantom didn't let him, hauling him closer with an iron grip and thrusting his fingers faster, giving Neji no choice but to give in the rushing storm that was quickly overtaking the ship of his self-control, gale-force winds shredding every sail and toppling the mainmast, leaving him dead in the water to await the crash of the mighty tidal wave he could see coming from far off. It pushed through the ocean of his confused, pleasure-addled mind with the force of a tsunami, drawing nearer and nearer until it loomed over him, as tall as a skyscraper, then came rushing down, down, the wall of water smashing his self-control ship to pieces until all that remained of it was scattered timber and debris littering the white-capped waves.

Neji shattered with the shattering of his ship, his entire world going as white as the inside of his shower walls. His whole body spasmed as he came, breaking apart into a thousand tiny pieces and melding into one small lump of smelted metal at the same time, overcome by heat and passion. Shikamaru held him almost tenderly as he rode out the waves of his orgasm, keeping him upright when he threatened to tip over and remaining uncomplaining even when bit Neji down quite hard on his lower lip in an effort to stop himself from crying out. Shudders wracked his body as he rode out the last few spasms, then Neji went absolutely limp in Shikamaru's arms, unable to do anything except pant harshly as all the tension - as well as all the remaining will to stand - drained out of his body.

"So, how was that?" Shikamaru asked breathlessly, and Neji was slightly mollified to hear that he was panting as well. "Worth the burden of nakedness?"

It took Neji a few seconds to remember how to speak again. "Definitely… definitely worth it."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence in my skills." Laboriously, Shikamaru slowly drew his fingers out of Neji's ass, and he winced at the feeling of emptiness the motion left behind.

Neji let himself be held silently for a few more moments before he forced his arms to relinquish their locked position around Shikamaru and leaned back so he could look the phantom in the face. "What… what did you do to me?" He gasped, feeling aftershocks still run through his body from where Shikamaru's fingers and the ends of his own hair tickled his skin. "What was that thing?"

"Hmm…" Shikamaru turned the shower back on and angled Neji under the spray so the flow of water would wash away the evidence of Neji's orgasm from both of their bodies. "The spot I touched inside of you? That was the place where your prostate lies closest to the walls of-"

"Alright, I get it!" Neji yelped, pushing Shikamaru away with a blush of scarlet mortification. "You don't have to go into that much detail!"

"Let's just suffice to say that it's a very erogenous spot for men," Shikamaru laughed, stepping back and allowing Neji to stand on his own.

"I'd never heard of it before," Neji admitted, turning so the water would hit his chest straight on and wash away the last of the white clinging to his skin. As he did so, he felt a pair of strong arms wrap around him from the back and a warm breath fan across his damp neck, and he shivered again.

"I'm not surprised," Shikamaru commented, letting the top of his head rub against Neji's jaw as he leaned into him. "Most people don't."

"Well, I'm glad you did."

"Yes, I'm sure you are."

Neji let the water cascade over him for a few more seconds before he sighed and reached forward, twisting the knob that controlled the water flow to shut the water off. "Alright, get off of me. I gotta get out and get dried off before my skin shrivels up like a prune."

Scoffing good-heartedly, Shikamaru did as he was bid. "You're such an old man, Neji. _Prunes_ , of all things. Next thing you know, you'll be complaining about how your dentures are too tight."

"You're older than me," Neji reminded the phantom as he stepped out of the shower, marveling at the playful way their banter went back and forth. He hadn't had this kind of conversation since- well, he'd never had it before, unless you counted the good-natured ribbing his friends from the jazz orchestra gave him over his unconventional hairstyle.

"In years alive or years dead- oh, wait, on both accounts. Shoulda thought that one through before I said it."

"You did- just like you thought through the joke on the end. You're not that slow, Shikamaru, and neither am I."

"I can't pull one past you, now can I?"

"I'm not as easy to fool as you seem to think I am."

"We'll just have to see about that."

Shaking his head, Neji grabbed a towel and wiped the excess water off his body before stepping into a bathroom and grabbing his hair brush. Standing in front of the mirror, he brushed the snarls out of his long hair as Shikamaru leaned against the counter beside him, keeping up the steady stream of quirky conversation that would have been comical if it hadn't been so heartwarming. Unable to stop the smile spreading across his face, Neji bantered right back, at times being made a fool of and at times making Shikamaru the fool - though the ratio of their wins was highly stacked in Shikamaru's favor. To anyone else, Neji knew the scene would have looked entirely different: a young man alone in the bathroom, talking to his own reflection, Shikamaru's presence giving nothing to identify itself, not even the reflection of a curling shadow in the mirror or a drop of water from dark hair that was already dry. Still, though, it meant something to him, and that was all that mattered.

Now just what it meant to him was the important part he still had to figure out.

Eventually during their conversation, Neji cast a glance at the ghost leaning on the counter next to him, and stilled when he saw his posture. Shikamaru had his hands shoved deep in his pants pockets and his smile was lazy, but his eyes were sharp, enjoying the moment. He was laughing softly at something Neji had said, his eyes meeting the gaze of Neji's reflection rather than the eyes in his real face, and he hadn't bother to conjure up another shirt yet, so his fully muscled chest was on display, rippling as he held in the laughter. It was a view much like the one he'd been sneaking glances at for the past several minutes, but something was fundamentally different about it at the same time, something Neji couldn't quite put his finger on. Frowning slightly, he stared harder at the profile of the phantom, trying to figure out why he was suddenly more alluring than he had been a moment before.

...Alluring?

In that single moment, Neji's eyes widened as he understood the first time he'd ever thought such a thing in his life shocking him: Shikamaru looked sexy. Something about the tilt of Shikamaru's head, showing off the strong cords of his neck, or the casual slouch of his shoulders, or perhaps the way the waistband of his army pants sat low on his hips, hinting at what lay beneath the fabric, had given him pause, drawing his eye in a way he hadn't expected: an almost lustful way. Unable to stop himself, Neji found his eyes trailing along the curves of Shikamaru's form, following a path he wanted his hands to trace instead.

 _What is this?_ He thought disjointedly through his heady confusion. _Am I… attracted to him?_

The night before and just a few minutes earlier in the shower had marked the two instances where Neji had physically been closest to another person in his whole life, but he hadn't quite realized what that meant until a few seconds ago. Yes, he'd wanted Shikamaru around and enjoyed their games and the kisses they'd shared, but he'd have been content to leave it at that. And then the night before had happened, and Neji had been transported to a whole new dimension he hadn't known existed before. No longer was he content with kisses laced with chastity, or even the feeling of Shikamaru's hands on his body; no, he wanted to touch Shikamaru as well, and he wanted to touch him badly. Last night he'd offered to reciprocate out of a sense of fairness more than anything else, but now all he could think about was trailing his lips down Shikamaru's smooth chest in the same path the phantom had taken on him, of making him cry out as Neji had cried out in his embrace and knowing that he was the one to make such pleasure course through his partner's body.

This, Neji figured, his mouth going dry in anticipation, was probably similar to how Shikamaru had felt earlier in the shower, watching Neji's body shake under his ministrations and somehow garnering pleasure from it even though he'd had no action himself to speak of. A wave of dizziness swept over Neji as he lost himself further into a fantasy he hadn't known was attractive to him until he'd seen it, watching Shikamaru's smug expression devolve into a pleasure-induced blush - pleasure Neji caused - and his eyes glaze over with lust. His head arched back, his neck christened with a purple mark Neji had left as a symbol of his possession and his mouth opening to let out a soft cry, begging for more-

"Hey, Earth to Neji? Are you listening to me?"

Neji was abruptly jerked back from his fantasy to stare into the very real, unclouded-by-lust gaze of the phantom leaning against the counter next to him. Flushing as though he'd been caught doing something naughty, Neji dropped his gaze so he wasn't looking at the unconsciously scintillating body on display for him to feast his eyes on and cleared his throat in embarrassment.

"S-sorry, I don't know what… I was just lost in thought."

"I could see that." Shikamaru leaned towards Neji, but the Hyuuga kept his eyes trained on the mirror so he had no chance of catching the phantom's gaze. "And what, pray tell, was that thought? You were looking at me in a very interesting way, like I'd either just killed your cat or we were stuck on a deserted island together and I'd just eaten the last of the ration and you were now considering eating _me_ instead."

"I don't have a cat," Neji intoned robotically, keeping his eyes locked with his reflection in the mirror and moving his hands through the motions of brushing his hair almost mechanically. "But you have a very vivid imagination."

"Hey, hey, wait a minute. I'm losing you, Neji." Shikamaru deftly reached up and grabbed Neji's wrist, forcing him to stop his mechanical motions and drawing his gaze back to the ghost next to him. "I don't know what I did, but you just closed off without any warning. What's wrong, Neji? Was it something I said?"

If only it was that simple. Neji lowered the hair brush to the counter, breaking eye contact with Shikamaru once more.

"Shikamaru, why won't you let me touch you?"

Neji felt rather than saw the ghost next to him stiffen at the question, and he held his breath as he waited for the answer.

"What makes you say that?" Shikamaru finally asked, avoiding the question with one of his own.

That pissed Neji off, but not enough for him to turn the conversation into an argument yet. "Last night, and again in the shower. You brushed me off, pushed my hands away. Why?"

Another silence, even longer than the first, stretched out before Shikamaru finally broke it.

"I told you last night, Neji: I'm dead, my body doesn't react like a human's sometimes-"

"Bullshit," Neji interrupted quietly, finally looking up to see that he had shocked Shikamaru speechless, an accomplishment he might have been proud of if he wasn't so irritated at the phantom. "I call bullshit on that one, Shikamaru. We were pressed very close together in that shower, and you might not have been as far gone as I was, but I could definitely feel something. So why wouldn't you let me do the same thing for you that you did for me? I was willing to- I wanted to! Why did you push me away?"

Shikamaru remained speechless for a few more seconds, his mouth hanging open a thread, as if he'd frozen in the middle of his word when Neji had cut him off and hadn't bothered to thaw, then looked away with a humorless laugh, directing his gaze upward, to the bank of clouds he couldn't see hidden behind a blank ceiling.

"You go me on that one, I'll admit. I thought you hadn't noticed."

"I said I was more difficult to fool that you gave me credit for." Neji allowed himself a moment of mollified silence before speaking again. "But you still haven't answered my question."

"Because I was afraid, alright!"

Neji had to blink as he digested that statement, looking at Shikamaru staring angrily at the ceiling as if he could burn a hole in it with just his gaze. "You were… afraid? Of what?"

"Of disappointing you."

"Of disappointing… me? How does that work?"

Taking in a deep breath, Shikamaru turned to Neji and held a hand up. "Touch my palm."

"But why-?"

"Just do it."

Neji stared at Shikamaru's palm for a moment, then reached his hand forward and rested his own hand against the ghost's. It was warm and rough, but strangely insubstantial at the same time.

"Feels almost real, doesn't it?" Shikamaru asked quietly, something dark and upset hiding in his gaze. "Feels almost like you're holding the hand of someone still alive, someone you could have a physical relationship with without a second thought."

"I don't understand-" Neji started, but Shikamaru cut him off, pulling his hand away and turning it around so the back of his hand faced Neji instead of the palm.

"Now touch the back of my hand."

Still unsure what Shikamaru was getting at, Neji did as he was bade, but hesitantly. His eyes widened, however, when he reached what should have been the skin at the back of Shikamaru's hand was what was instead insubstantial mist, allowing his hand to go through Shikamaru's until it reached what would have been the skin of palm from the backside, which was still solid, though only the thickness of a sheet of paper.

"Do you see now?" Shikamaru asked quietly, looking down at Neji's hand resting comfortably inside of his own. " _This_ is my specialty, just corporeal enough to appear like I'm solid, but in reality full of holes. Sure, it can be done - just look at Naruto or Kiba; Kiba's had enough practice with full corporeality to be able to play with a dog, and Naruto has enough stamina to be able to even fully digest food if he wants to - but just not by me. I've cut so many corners in corporeality, never once imagining that it was a skill I'd ever want to make use of, that I'm way behind other ghosts of my caliber. I just don't want to start something and disappoint you by being unable to finish it."

"I wouldn't be-" Neji tried to protest, but Shikamaru was already shaking his head.

"Yes, you would be, though you'd try to hide it. Imagine what would happen if I was half-hard, and then was suddenly unable to go beyond half-hard? Or if you were touching me and then suddenly where you were touching was gone, with nothing but a gaping hole of nothingness left? That's what I'm afraid will happen. I want to do it, Neji, I really do, but I know my limits. I can do it, but not right now. I need practice first, just a little bit of time, and then we can do whatever you want to do. Just not right now."

Neji looked down, unable to meet the haunted emotion in Shikamaru's gaze. It made sense when it was all laid out like that, so much sense that Neji wondered how he couldn't come up with it himself. "I'm sorry," he said, not even sure what he was apologizing for, just feeling that he should be apologizing. It had obviously taken a lot of humility for Shikamaru to give up his pride and admit what he'd just told Neji, so he felt like he owed it to the phantom.

But Shikamaru shook off the apology, disentangling his incorporeal hand from Neji's own. "It's not your fault; actually, if anyone here should be apologizing, it's me." He took a step back, surveying the scene. "Well, I feel like I've rather killed the mood. Should I leave?"

"Actually, that might be a good idea," Neji admitted, though he felt bad when he saw the hurt flash in Shikamaru's gaze that the phantom tried to hide so he quickly continued. "I just found out that I have to meet with the elders tomorrow so I have to meditate tonight to make my aura go back to normal, otherwise they might find traces of you and if that happens they'll be a witch hunt going on all over Seattle."

Something clicked behind Shikamaru's eyes, and he gave a single curt nod of understanding. "Alright. Do you think it might be better for me to leave Seattle entirely for a day or two, then?"

Neji couldn't deny that the suggestion shocked him, though once he thought about it, it did make sense. "That might not actually be a bad idea. They might keep a close watch on me for up to twenty-four hours after the meeting depending on if they like how it goes, so it might be safer for both of us to have a little more distance until things blow over. I don't know what they've called me in for - it could be for anything from my job to something they want me to look into to a personal matter - but having traces of your energy detected in my aura would definitely be dangerous for both of us."

"I can do that." Shikamaru nodded to himself, surprising Neji that he was giving in so quickly. "I'll go down to Oregon for a few days; I knew some people from there that I've been meaning to see if they'd died yet anyway. Would the evening of the day after tomorrow be enough time to throw off any potential observers?"

"Y-yes, it would," Neji replied, stunned that Shikamaru was agreeing so easily.

"Then I'll get going." He stood up straighter and moved as if to leave, shocking Neji even further.

"You're leaving right now?"

A single lazy eye regarded Neji inscrutably from behind a strange mask in profile. "You did say that you had to meditate to clear your aura."

"I- I did say that," Neji said, feeling rather lame. "You just- took me by surprise by agreeing so easily."

"Well, causing you trouble with your family is the last thing I want to do." Shikamaru leaned back toward Neji with a superior smirk. "Are you afraid that you'll miss me?"

"Of course not!" Neji protested, then when he was faced with a knowing smirk, he blushed and looked downwards. "Well, maybe a little."

"I'll have to give you something to remember me by until I come back, then."

Before he know what was happening, Neji found his jaw captured in an unbreakable grip, then his lips found themselves occupied by a second pair. The kiss wasn't like other ones they had shared, full of rolling tongues and need, but instead composed entirely of sweetness and pure emotion. It lasted only a few seconds, but Neji could have sworn that empires had risen and fallen before Shikamaru finally pulled back.

"See you in a few days, Neji. I'll count every hour."

Neji couldn't remember when he'd closed his eyes, but when he opened them again Shikamaru was gone, leaving him alone in the bathroom with his thoughts. Glancing at his reflection in the mirror, he saw that his face was stained with red and hands were trembling.

 _Fuck, I really need to figure out what I'm doing._

* * *

AN- and for those of you who are wondering, Namaki is real character- sort of. I couldn't find a name so I just gave her one, but her existence is at least implied, even if she doesn't have a name.


	13. Comedy Trio

Hey all! Another chapter is up! Thanks so much to **Falainakorna** for you wonderful words two chapters in a row- I feel so bad that I missed the last one! It's really great to hear that you think my writing is improving because I've recently gone back and reread the first few chapters of things I've written and... yeah. Anyway, just glad to know that I've improved. Thanks a bunch!

And now for an IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!

A/N: I'm going to be working on another project during the month of April, so there will be no updates for a few weeks. Sorry, but I also have to get the other thing done too, so kinda not sorry at the same time. But THIS STORY WILL NOT BE ABANDONED! I will be back by May at the latest (if any of you are still around to read this, anyways). I know a lot of people say that, but I really, really mean it. Anyway, happy reading everyone and I'll see you next in May!

Addi out!

* * *

 _Fire._

 _Everywhere._

 _It flows around the walls and through the doorways, gnashing ephemeral teeth dripping with flaming blood, its appetite for destruction only whetted by the taste it had already gotten. Smoke, thick and black like pitch, spreads through the air, making it all but impossible to breathe except for the few inches above the floor, but ducking down to breathe that barely passable air will leave him open to attack from the flame-beast hunting him, so it wasn't an option. In the end, he collapses down on his hands and knees and scuttles away from the strongest source of heat as quickly as he could, coughing hard enough to retch as he tries to protect his head from falling embers with minimal success._

 _The fire roars all around him, glaring faces forming in the flames to mock him: the face of his father, his mother, his older brother, his mentors, those he had hunted and those who had hunted him- he sees them all, and they all terrify him. Overcome by the smoke and heat, blinded by the brilliant flames and exhausted beyond belief, he eventually curls up in a ball, his back pressed against the cool - relatively - surface of a stone wall and his head falling to the floor, his eyes drifting shut and his lungs giving up on their job of pushing air into his body when all they can find is smoke as thick as hot tar._

 _In the distance, he hears the sound of falling timber, of the destruction caused by fire axes and the rushing of high-pressure water, but it's so insignificant to his oxygen-starved mind that he can't place the sounds for what they are: a rescue. Firefighters smash their way through the burning wreckage, looking for survivors, but to him their masked faces are as terrifying as the mirages conjured up by the flames, twisted and psychedelic. A man - or a woman, it's impossible to tell with the gear they wear - picks him up, his limp body lolling almost comically in their oversized, bulky arms. The last thing that flashes through his mind before he passes out is a warning and a promise, though not one he's sure he'll be able to keep._

I have to warn them. I have to warn them about the fire… I have to tell them the Akatsuki are coming.

* * *

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Udon asked for what might have been the hundredth time in a quarter as many minutes, reaching into his pocket for a tissue to blow his perpetually-runny nose in.

"Of course this is a good idea!" Konohamaru snapped from where he was perched behind a nearby hedge, staring at Neji's apartment through a pair of binoculars. "Neji just about ripped me a new one the other day; that kind of behavior isn't normal! There's got to be _something_ going on, and we have to figure out what it is!"

"I agree," Moegi said from next to him, holding an umbrella over both their heads to protect them from the light drizzle draining out of the sky and peering through her own set of binoculars."We simply _have_ to find some dirt on Neji. What kind of friends would we be if we didn't?"

"Um, good ones?" Udon stuck his used tissue back in his pocket and pulled the hood of his rain jacket a little further over his face, wishing he'd had the forethought to bring an umbrella. "Moegi, you're usually the one who stops all this nonsense when Konohamaru gets out of hand. What's got you so riled up this time?"

"Gossip, Udon," she replied without taking her eyes off of Neji's apartment window through the binoculars. "A girl has to know what she's dealing with, and sometimes gossip is the only way to do that. Life's great mysteries were put on this earth to be solved, and they just so happen to include 'does Neji Hyuuga is gay?'"

"'Life's great mysteries'," Udon scoffed. "You just want to know if you can safely hit on him. Can I go now?"

"I resent your accusation, Udon; I would never entertain the notion of flirting with a fellow bandmate. Music is more important than romance."

"I'm here, too," Konohamaru interjected, also speaking to Udon without looking away from the lense of his binoculars. "And I'm certainly not trying to decide if I can hit on him or not."

"Coulda fooled me," Undon muttered under his breath.

Moegi slapped Konohamaru's arm without looking at him. "And no, you cannot leave. You're our lookout, remember?"

"There's two of you; one of you be the lookout!"

"Not happening," both Konohamaru and Moegi chorused as one, neither one of them looking away from their quarry.

Sulking, Udon turned away from them to look up the street through the annoying drizzle. "I can't believe I let you drag me out of bed this early for something as stupid as this."

Suddenly, Moegi's voice cut through the chilly drizzle, shooting up in pitch with her excitement. "There he is! Ooo, he's shirtless… huh, I guess even Neji gets comfortable in his own home."

"How do you not realize how creepy this is?" Udon asked blandly, though it was mostly to himself since he knew the two people next to him wouldn't hear him.

"I see him, I see him! Move over; I want to get a better view!"

"I'm holding the umbrella- if you want a better view, then you take a turn!"

"Oh, fine, I'll take the umbrella." A brief scuffle ensued as the umbrella changed hands. "Now move over so I can see!"

Sighing, Udon turned to look at his two friend, wondering not for the first time why he was friends with them in the first place. "You know this is stalking, right? Neji could call the cops on us if he wanted to, and get a restraining order- we might even go to _jail_."

"Oh, can it and keep watch for us, Udon," Moegi snapped without sympathy, her gaze still fixed squarely on Neji's window through the binoculars. "People rarely get in trouble for these kinds of things in movies and literature unless it's a plot point, and I highly doubt us spending a few nights in jail would bring much to the story so I'm willing to take that risk. Ooo, Konohamaru, do you see that?! I think there's something on his neck!"

"What, like a bug bite?"

"No, like a _hickey-_ or at least a bruise."

"WHAT?! Get out of the way; I want to see!"

"Quit shoving!"

"I took the umbrella, didn't I? Now let me see!"

"S-see what?"

All three would-be stalkers whirled around at the sound of a new voice from behind them, sweetly quiet and slightly stuttering, to see the figure of Neji's younger cousin standing behind them in a bright yellow raincoat and pink puddle boots a size too large for her, regarding them with nervous amusement. Moegi and Konohamaru instantly whipped their binoculars behind their backs, though it was clear that she'd already seen them by the quiet giggle she made when she caught the motion.

"Udon, I thought you were keeping watch!" Konohamaru hissed, definitely loud enough for the girl in front of them to hear.

"Well, excuse me for trying to talk some common sense into you- now we've been caught!"

" _That's why you were on lookout for us_!"

Watching their banter with clear amusement in her eyes, the girl eventually interrupted them again with a quiet stammer. "Y-you're N-Neji's friends, r-right?"

"Yes, we are," Udon cut in before the other two could respond, hoping to turn the conversation to a safer topic before it turned towards their blatant stalking. "And you're his cousin, right? Henrietta, was it?"

"H-Hinata, actually." The girl gave them a sweet smile, her rubber boots squeaking against the wet pavement as she shifted her position. "And-d you are… Udon, M-Moegi, and Kono- Konohamaru, right?"

"Yes," Udon replied, surprised that she had remembered their names and a little embarrassed that he hadn't been able to say hers correctly.

"You- you remember my name?" Konohamaru asked, stars shining in his eyes when he looked at Hinata like he had just seen an angel.

Hinata giggled again, even the sound of her laughter quiet and uncertain. "Of c-course. You all yelled-d at each other s-so much it was im-impossible to f-forget them!"

"I can see that," Moegi allowed sheepishly, self consciously scratching the back of her her head with her very conspicuous pair of binoculars. "We do tend to get pretty loud sometimes."

Hinata nodded and smiled gently at them, but Udon noticed that she gripped her right wrist with her left hand, as if to stop them from shaking. "S-so, what are you d-doing around here?"

"We're just out on a nice stroll, aren't we, guys-?" Udon started to say, swiping Moegi's binoculars and trying to hide them, but she grabbed them back and held them out for Hinata's inspection.

"We're stalking your cousin. He's been acting weird lately, and we're trying to find out why. And also to get some blackmail material we can use on him later. But mostly the first one."

Udon was just barely able to stop himself from facepalming, but he held off the gut reaction when he heard Hinata's next words.

"Oh, y-you t-to? That's g-good; I thought I w-was the only on-one."

"Wait, you're not mad?" He asked incredulously, wincing when Konohamaru elbowed him in the ribs, accidentally showering him with drop from the open umbrella in the process.

"Of course she's not mad, you dingus: She's a friggin' _angel_."

Moegi snorted gently. "Don't let Neji hear you say that, or he'll smash you into the ground."

"It'd be totally worth it, though."

"U-u-um-m-m, ex-excus-se m-m-me..." All three of them looked back up at the girl in front of them when they heard her unmistakable stutter, taking in her impossibly red face. "D-d-did you r-real-ly m-mean wh-what y-you s-said-d?"

"What, about you being an angel?" Konohamaru shot a silly grin at Hinata, which, if possible, only made her face turn even redder. "'Course I meant it! You're one of the most adorable - if not the most adorable - thing I've ever seen in my entire life, and sweet, and really cute, and someone please shut me up before I say something stupid. Can I have your number? Oh, God, like that! Neji is going to straight up murder me! I wasn't kidding about that part either."

"You shoulda just kept your mouth shut." Moegi shook her head, looking like she was unsure whether she should be amused or disgusted by Konohamaru's behavior.

"THAT'S WHY I TOLD YOU TO SHUT ME UP BEFORE I SAID SOMETHING STUPID!"

"Yeah, but your stupid mouth took over your brain before either one of us had a chance to do anything. You made this bed, now you sleep in it."

Konohamaru's head jackknifed to the other side, staring in terror at his other friend. "UDON?!"

But Udon only shook his head. "Sorry, I'm with Moegi on this one. I didn't even want to come here in the first place."

"I THOUGHT YOU GUYS WERE MY FRIENDS!"

"Yeah, your friends, not your suicide squad. If you're going down, we're not going down with you."

"THAT'S NOT HELPING!"

Catching sight of Hinata's completely overwhelmed expression, Udon took pity on her and stepped between her and Konohamaru. "Stop scaring her, you nitwit! Do you want to still have control over your base motor functions when Neji's done with you?"

Judging by the panic that descended over Konohamaru's face, he hadn't thought that far ahead yet. Amid his incoherent, stumbling reply, Moegi grabbed the back of his head and forced him to bow to Hinata. "Apologize to her, you ass! I do not want to get hurt through association with you!"

"Gah! I'm sorry! I don't know what came over me! Please accept my apology and don't sic your cousin on me!"

For a moment, Hinata looked like she was going to hyperventilate and pass out right there on the sidewalk, then she took a deep, shuddery breath, squared her shoulders, and blurted out a stuttery stream of numbers.

The three friends all froze at the unexpected sound, looking up at Hinata. Even Konohamaru escaped Moegi's grasp to stare up at her from his awkward half-crouching, half-leaning over position. "What was that?"

Hinata, for her part, looked like she wanted to take back whatever it was she had said and crawl back into her oversized rain jacket like a turtle into the protection and privacy of its own shell. "M-m-my n-n-num-mb-ber. Y-you w-want-ted-d it-t-t."

"R-really?" Konohamaru's eyes were shining like she had just presented him with a tiny piece of the sun to chase away the perceptually cloudy sky cover in a gift box, all done up with a sweet pink bow.

Udon elbowed him in the ribs, hissing, "Dude, that's creepy. She's younger than us!"

"Only by a year!" Konohamaru hissed back without looking away from Hinata. "You guys keep forgetting I'm younger than you are!"

"Oh, yeah, I forgot you're still in high school," Moegi realized. "Hinata, what grade are you going into this September?"

"Act-tually, b-both N-Nej-ji and I are h-homesch-chooled-d," Hinata whispered. "W-we get t-tutored-d p-privately by m-members-s of our f-family until-l w-we c-can t-take c-coll-lege classes-s online to b-best p-prepare us-s for our l-lives. I'll l-likely m-move on t-to that-t ph-phase in s-six or eight-t month-ths."

The line sounded stilted at best, and something she had been forced to recite over and over again until it was true at worst. Udon tilted his head to the side, watching her face as she spoke, before deciding it wasn't something he had any business meddling in. Unfortunately, Konohamaru either didn't have the same sense of what was his business and what wasn't - either that or he was still starstruck - and he asked, "Your lives? What does that entail?"

Hinata blinked once, a small frown on her face. "Our l-lives as H-Hyuuga."

"That's it?" Moegi leaned forward, clearly curious. "Just 'as Hyuuga'? Don't you have anything you want to be when you grow up, Hinata? Like a dream job?"

"A… d-dream j-job-b?" Clearly, she didn't understand the concept. "I'm going to b-be a Hy-Hyuuga."

"Yes, but what does that _mean_?" Moegi demanded further, taking a step towards Hinata and missing the subtle clues of new panic around her eyes.

Choosing this moment to step back in, Udon tactfully pushed Moegi back to a more comfortable distance. "Leave the poor girl alone, Moegi. Can't you see she's uncomfortable? We've probably taken up more than our fair share of your time," he added, directing this at the blushing girl in front of them. "Sorry to have kept you."

"I-it's f-fine," she stuttered back, playing with the hem of her raincoat. "I was j-just on my w-way to see N-Neji, so you d-didn't hold m-me up t-too much."

"That's good, at least." Moegi gave her a cheery smile, waving with her binoculars. "Now, you keep a lookout from the inside and we'll take the outside, and together we'll figure out what's been bothering him, 'kay?"

Even tucking her chin down inside her raincoat couldn't hine the smile creeping onto Hinata's face. "D-deal. Though I th-think Neji has p-probably n-noticed you by n-now and will cl-close the b-blinds soon."

"EH?!" Both Konohamaru and Moegi whipped their head around to look back up at the window they had forgotten they were supposed to be observing. Neji stood silhouetted against the backdrop of his living room with his arms crossed over his chest, looking entirely unamused at the whole scene below him. When his eyes met Hinata's, he raised his hands and made a few economical but purposeful hand gestures, which Hinata's hands responded to in kind. After seeing her response, Neji gave a curt nod, then pulled the curtain closed, cutting off their view of the inside of his apartment.

"Damn!" Moegi tossed her binoculars unceremoniously to the ground, folding her arms across her chest in a huff. "And here I thought we'd finally found something, too!"

For his part, Konohamaru appeared not to mind that they'd lost their quarry, instead still focusing on the angel in front of him. "What was that? That thing you did? With your hands?"

"Oh, th-this?" Hinata demonstrated the motion once more, again too quickly for Udon's eyes to follow. "I was j-just telling N-Neji that-t I would-d be up s-soon."

"How? Was that… sign language?" At Hinata's nod, Konohamaru stared at her with even more admiration shining in his eyes. "You know _sign language_?"

Again, Hinata cocked her head to the side in confusion. "You d-don't?"

"Of course not! People only learn sign language if they have to!" Moegi leaned forward again, her binoculars on the ground forgotten in her curiosity. "Does one of you have a deaf sibling or something?"

"N-no; b-both Neji and I are only ch-children. W-we learn sign l-language because it-t makes n-nonverbal-l c-communic-cation easy."

"Man." Konohamaru shook his head in disbelief. "I know Neji said you guy's family was different, but I never knew you were _that_ different. It sounds almost like some weird cult. So you've never gone to public school, you're going to take college courses online, you know _sign language_ \- do you even have any friends?"

"Neji's my best friend," she responded instantly without any stuttering, and then her face heated up further, ducking down into her raincoat as far as she could go and blushing so much Udon would not have been surprised if steam started pouring from her ears. "A-nd-d s-since y-you'r-re h-his f-fr-friend-ds I-I th-thought-t th-at m-m-mayb-be y-you m-m-might-t w-wan-nt t-to b-be m-m-my f-f-fr-frien-nd-ds t-t-t-too…"

 _Awwwwwwwwwwww_ was the only thing that went through Udon's mind when he looked at the nervous girl in front of them, shifting her feel in those adorably oversized pink puddle boots, and from the looks on both Konohamaru's and Moegi's faces, it was the only thing they could think as well.

"I can see why you like her, Konohamaru," Udon commented idly, his eyes stuck to Hinata's nervous form. "She's completely adorable."

"Dude, back off. I just made an idiot of myself in front of her, so I get dibs."

"Guys." Moegi bopped Konohamaru on the top of the head with his own binoculars, having stolen them from his loose grip moments before. "She's right there. Stop talking about her as if she can't hear us."

Udon snorted disparagingly. "That includes you too, Moegi."

"Why do I feel like this has turned into a hopeless comedy trio?"

"Because it probably has. The only thing we need now is wet paint and a banana peel, and our routine would be complete."

"...I can't tell if that's funny or depressing."

"It's probably a little of both."

"U-um…" The trio looked back up at Hinata when she spoke, her face looking a little less like the surface of the sun but still retaining a slight pink tinge. "It was n-nice to r-run into you, b-but I reall-ly do have t-to go see N-Neji now. B-but you can t-t-t-t-te-te-tex-x-" She cut the word off, unable to finish it, as her cheeks heated up again, switching to a word that was less objectionable to her nervous tongue. "-T-talk to m-me later, since I g-gave you m-my numb-ber…"

That's right; she had given them her number earlier, albeit while stuttering. Udon shook his head; he couldn't understand how someone like her could be related to someone like Neji. Apart from their physical appearances - which were remarkably similar, with the same long, dark hair, pale skin and lavender eyes - they couldn't have been more different, with Hinata's quiet, stuttering nervousness and Neji's aloof pride and air of confidence. It must be a miracle, he figured, that allowed them to get along so well.

Out loud, he said, "'Course we will. We're friends now, aren't we?"

At the word 'friends', Hinata jumped, looking like she wasn't sure if she'd just been shot or given an extraordinary gift, then her face softened into a happy smile that she quickly tried to hide by ducking down into her raincoat. For a moment, she looked like she was going to say something else, perhaps a _talk to you later_ , then she clutched her hood tighter around her face and scurried away without another word. The trio, particularly Konohamaru, watched her go with fond expressions, like the kind a mother might give to the back of her child off to her first day of school.

"She really did give me her number," Konohamaru mused, his eyes unfocused and dreamy. "Pinch me, someone."

Moegi stole the umbrella out of his loose grasp and used it to smack him none-too-gently on the back of the head. The force sent him stumbling, almost falling forward flat on his face, before he popped back up with a glare.

" _Thank_ you, Moegi. Well, at least I know for certain I wasn't dreaming."

Hinata entered Neji's apartment, disappearing from view, and Udon turned away as soon as she had gone. "Well, it doesn't look like we're going to be getting any more valuable intel today, so can we _please_ just call it a day and go do something else?"

"I guess," Moegi allowed with a loud sigh. "We'll just have to hope that Hinata keeps us posted. You still remember her number, right, Konohamaru?"

"Of course!" Konohamaru puffed out his chest with angry arrogance. "As if I'd forget anything my angel would say! It's…" His eyes widened as he trailed off, unable to come up with the first digit. "I can't remember it!"

Instantly, Moegi yanked him to the ground, and they frantically traced numbers in the dirt together, scribbling out and replacing ones they deemed wrong, trying frantically to remember all seven digits correctly. Watching them, Udon couldn't help but shake his head in amusement. Of course, he remembered the whole number perfectly, but it was more fun to watch them suffer for a bit.

He certainly had some crazy friends.

* * *

When Hinata made up to Neji's apartment, she found him still standing at the window, looking out from between the blinds at the trio across the road.

"What are they doing?" He asked when he heard the door open, trusting it to be Hinata without even looking back.

Hanging up her raincoat, Hinata replied, "Sp-spying on you. They s-said that y-you've b-been acting strang-ge lately." Inwardly, she winced at at her stutter, which had elevated to a higher rate than normal from her encounter with Neji's friends. They were nice people, but no matter how nice they were, Hinata still found herself getting nervous around new people.

The elevated rate of the stutter was not lost on Neji, and he instantly turned back to look at her. "Are you okay?"

"I'm f-fine," Hinata said firmly, squaring her shoulders despite how her tongue tripped over the word, refuting her point even as she made it. "I n-need to meet new p-people or I'll never get over it."

"Hm…" Neji's eyes sharpened, and Hinata could tell that he wasn't convinced, but he let it slide. "I can't believe they staked out my apartment. Some people really have no shame. I wonder if I should call the police on them?" He mused suddenly, turning back to the window to peer through the blinds once again.

"Oh, leave them alone, N-Neji. They're d-doing it because they care about you." She sat down in the customary position, sending a gentle smile his way when he turned back to her. "L-let's get back to work, okay?"


	14. The Ghost in Our Minds

HA HA HA I'M BACK! WHO MISSED ME?

April was productive, though not as much as I would have liked... but I'm back here now! (Dare I say back where I belong...?) I have certainly missed this story, and this will now be going back to regular updates of at least every Sunday, every Sunday and Thursday if I have a good week!

I was so happy to hear that you'd miss me, Falainakorna! Though this chapter is different characters so you'll have to wait even longer for the answer to your question... but I promise it will be next chapter (hopefully up on Thursday).

And wow, it's been a while, SoraROCK! Nice to see you again and hope you enjoy this second installment!

* * *

"Are you sure about this?" Kisame asked for what had to be the thousandth time since Itachi had proposed his plan. "I mean, are you sure this is going to work? What if something goes wrong? What if he hurts you? Oh, God, what if-?"

"Kisame!" Itachi stopped the flow of worried words from Kisame's mouth with a gentle hand. "We've gone over this before. It will work, I promise. All you have to do is trust me."

They were standing in the hallway in front of the door to the previous Boss's room in the dead of night, their voices hushed so as not to wake any of the other members of the gang who slept at the main house. The room had been sealed since his assassination, only opened long enough to dispose of the body and clean the bloodstains from the carpet before it had been shut again, this time permanently. It had been Itachi's idea for him to check out the room and the ball of restless energy residing there that night after everyone else had gone to sleep, an idea Kisame had readily - if not happily - agreed to.

Kisame pulled Itachi's hand from his mouth but didn't let go of it, instead gripping it tighter "But can you handle it?" He asked quietly. "What if it brings up bad memories for you? I remember what you told me, about that wraith and your brother. What if it reminds you of…?" He trailed off, obviously not wanting to finish the sentence.

"I'd like to think I'm stronger now," Itachi said quietly, shifting his hand in Kisame's grip so their fingers could lace together. "After all, I have something tangible to protect now. I won't be so easily overcome."

"But still-"

"Hush." Itachi pulled his hand free and smiled a reassuring smile at Kisame. "I'll be fine. I said he wasn't fully formed yet, didn't I? Right now, he's just a ball of angry emotions, barely conscious, if at all. That's why he needs to be dealt with now, before he grows into a real problem."

Kisame sighed, his clothing rustling as he reached for something. "When you say it like that, I have no way to say no."

"And that is one of the most useful qualities a leader could possess." Itachi reached up and blindly patted his cheek. "Take notes, my young padawan."

"Oh my God, I just realized that they made like four new Star Wars movies while you were in that hospital and you don't know anything about them! We should watch them togeth- oh, wait. Awkward. Sorry."

Itachi had to hold in a chuckle. "I'm sure I could figure something out. We'll look into it after I finish this, alright?"

"Fine, I guess."

It didn't sound fine, but Itachi was going to take what he could get. Squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath to hide the nervousness he didn't want Kisame to know he felt, he extended a hand.

"You brought the goods, right?"

" _The goods_." Kisame snorted. "You sound like we're on a drug run."

Itachi couldn't resist a jab, a sly grin creeping across his face as he felt a bag of something settle in his palm. "That something you have a lot of experience with, eh, Kisame?"

"Well, I did work for my father for over a decade before I ran away. I straight up admitted to you that I've murdered people in the past; is the fact that I also distributed drugs really going to phase you?"

"When you put it like that, I guess not. You're learning." He grinned cheekily at him. "And we might as well be distributing; I imagine rock salt looks enough like cocaine that we could slip it past a few drugged-up junkies, especially if it's in the same kind of plastic baggie you always see on those ads against taking drugs."

"It is, dammit." Kisame let out an exasperated sound. "I honestly don't know whether to be amused or frustrated by that."

"Amusement is almost always the best course of action." Itachi wrapped his grip more securely around the back of rock salt. "And the knife?"

"Here." Kisame grabbed Itachi's free hand and curled his fingers around the hilt of a small knife. "I had a hell of a time finding one, but I got it eventually. Tell me again why you specifically need a silver blade?"

"Silver's the only metal that can touch ghosts," Itachi replied automatically, the rational part of his mind supplying the answer while the rest of him finally started to panic. He'd made this plan in the hours before this moment, but the reality of what he was about to do hadn't really hit him until the familiar weight of a blade had touched his palm. The sensation brought back tendrils of memory from his past, memories he'd long hoped had been irrevocably buried. Suddenly, it seemed to him that he was standing in front of the abandoned warehouse again, the one he'd entered with a cocky arrogance, never expecting anything to go wrong, and his life had been turned on his head. Itachi knew the vision wasn't real, that he'd blinded himself years ago and couldn't see the warehouse even if it was there, but still the image persisted, haunting him with the ghosts of his past - both literal and metaphorical.

"Itachi?"

Itachi jumped at the sensation of Kisame's hand on his arm, jerking him out of his reverie. The vision of the warehouse faded, leaving him once again in a world composed entirely of seamless darkness. He took several deep, shaky breaths, not even trying to hide how nervous he was now.

"Itachi, you don't have to do this-" Kisame started, but Itachi straightened his shoulders, dislodging the hand on his arm in the process.

"Yes; yes, I do." Itachi's grip tightened on the knife in his palm. Even though he couldn't see it, he knew how it would look nestled inside his palm, his fingers curled delicately around the hilt, and how it would look as it sliced through the air. "You've done so much for me; the least I can do in return is the only thing I was ever really good at in my old life."

"Itachi-"

"Is the door unlocked?" Itachi interrupted, not letting Kisame finish whatever he was going to say.

For a second, Itachi thought that Kisame was going to brush his question aside and continue where Itachi had cut him, but after a long moment of silence he sighed and moved to the door, unlocking it with a click. "It is now."

"Thank you." Itachi moved to the door, laying a hand on the wooden doorframe and tracing downwards until he found the doorknob. "You remember your part of the plan, right? Keep watch, don't let anyone come in- and that includes you. No matter what you hear, _don't come in_. Got it?"

"I got it," Kisame growled. "That doesn't mean I have to like it."

"No, you don't have to like it. But know that this is something you can't help me with. I usually don't know the identity of a ghost I have to deal with, but because he's your father he might become more volatile in your presence. It's better for everyone if I do this alone."

"I know that!" Kisame cried quietly, his hands fisting the material of his pants with the sound of rustling fabric. "My head tells me everything you say is true, that it makes sense, but I still…! I can't…!"

"Kisame…" Itachi started to turn back to look at him, but the motion was stopped by Kisame throwing his arms around his torso, pulling him back against his chest in a strong embrace.

"Just promise me you'll be safe?"

After his previous experiences, Itachi knew a promise like that could never be truthfully made in a situation like this one, but he did it anyway. "I'll be safe. I'll come back safe, Kisame. I promise."

"Good." Kisame let go of him rather stiffly, as if under strict orders from the logical side of his brain that was barely keeping ahead of his emotions. "It's getting late. You should hurry before anyone finds us."

"This shouldn't take more than ten minutes. I'll be back before you know it, Kisame."

Kisame didn't respond, so Itachi gripped the doorknob tighter to hide his trembling hands, then slowly turned it. It opened with a creak, and he heard Kisame casting furtive glances down the hallway in case anyone had overheard the sound and decided to check it out. Taking one last deep breath of untainted air, Itachi stepped through the open door and closed it behind his back, submerging himself in the thick aura of a pre-formed draugr for the first time in a decade.

The air felt thick and cold, as if treacle filled the room instead of oxygen. When Itachi raised the knife up high, in front of his face, he felt the aura lessen somewhat, making the treacle-air easier to breathe, but not by much.

Working quickly, Itachi took the bag of rock salt and sprinkled a generous line of it across the doorjamb, then skirted the walls by touch and gave them their own garnish of white power. The familiar motions gave his trembling hands a sense of purpose, calming his hyperactive nerves to an almost manageable level. The heavy air drew away from the barrier as it was formed, making the air at the edges of the room easier to breathe, until he completed the circle and felt the energy roll into a ball of malevolent emotions in the center of the room.

Even though it was more cohesive now, the spectral energy still hadn't found its form yet, and Itachi allowed himself to frown as he considered what to do next. As the ghost hadn't actually manifested yet - which was a rare occurrence this long after death, but not impossible, especially if the deceased had been ill before his or her death, like he had gathered the former Boss to be - there was little he could do to convince it to fade, since it didn't even have a consciousness to reason with yet. That left him with few options: he could either leave it alone - which he wasn't willing to do - or he could end it now, killing it for a second time without giving it a chance to fade.

That option wasn't optimal either. But in this situation, it was his best course of action. With an ashen taste in his mouth, Itachi dropped the empty plastic bag which had formerly contained rock salt and raised the silver blade instead, pointing it at the ball of energy in the center of the room. It shrank back on itself as the silver drew closer, sending out tendrils of poisonous dark aura to combat the bite of the silver. Itachi gulped at the too-familiar-for-comfort sensation of those dark tendrils brushing up again his mind and forced his shaking body to take another step forward, closer to the point emanating that sick aura. His palms turned sweaty and his hands started to shake worse than before, forcing him to grasp the hilt of the silver blade in both hands lest he drop it.

The thing in the center of the room solidified and began to throb, beating like a dark heart intent on drawing Itachi in with its malevolent power. His throat went dry at the sensation; this was starting to feel much too familiar for his nerves to take. The solid ball thrummed with a deafeningly silent energy he'd felt only once before, the day he'd lost the best part of himself forever. Again, shards of images he knew he couldn't actually see flashed across his mind's eye, showing him fragments of his past in the form of dark boxes shrouded in cobwebs, blinding flashes of sickly green energy and several twisted expressions, some from pain and the most memorable one from a sadistic joy.

The knife slipped from Itachis grasp and clattered against the floor. The sound was like a gunshot in Itachi's ears, shattering the illusion of silence the dark energy had cast into a thousand tiny fragments that dug painfully at the inside of his skull. Unable to help himself, Itachi slapped his hands over his ears and sank to his knees, overcome by powerful presence of the ghost, even though it was still unformed.

Why was it affecting him this much? Even if it was the first ghost he'd dealt with since his incarceration - not counting the instance with Kisame's younger sister - it shouldn't affect him this much because it wasn't-

Oh.

But it _was._

The ghost Itachi had unsuspectingly been sent to subdue had been a wraith, a sick bastard who'd been a doctor during his life, carrying out experimental surgeries in underground hospitals will no regard for the lives that ended under his scalpel- all in the name of forwarding science, the greater god. He'd continued his bloody research of the human body even after his own death, but this time with the intent of learning how to bring himself back to life. The haunting miasma that flowed through this room felt uncannily similar to that horrible aura Itachi would never be able to forget because it _was_ the same.

How could he have forgotten that Kisame's father had been a mob boss in life? That if Kisame had ended lives on his orders, it was plausible that he himself had killed as well? Enough, certainly, to earn him the title of wraith if he didn't pass on after his death?

Itachi felt like he was going to be sick. He needed to get out of that room, and fast. Too many memories were crawling up from the depths of his mind where he'd buried them long ago, too many sick sensations sliding over his skin like poisonous ooze. He started to haul himself across the floor of the room toward the door with painful slowness, hating every fiber of wood that separated himself from the fresh air on the other side of the door.

It felt like a miracle when his fingertips finally drove into the line of salt he'd sprinkled around the perimeter of the room. He wasn't precisely at the door, but he felt along the wall until he found the edge of the doorjamb and hauled himself up by the doorknob.

Before he could turn it and escape the warehouse - _room, not warehouse, room_ , he had to remind himself - a sudden voice oozed out from the ball of energy behind him, hoarse and gritty and formless, at once black and colorless.

"My… son…. My son…"

Itachi froze, every bone in his body telling him to flee but his paralyzing terror easily overpowering every protective instinct he possessed. He felt a tendril of dark energy flow experimentally across the room to taste his aura, and then touch him gently on the back. He had to fight the urge to scream and vomit at the same time at the sensation.

"You're not… him…" The disembodied voice continued, with a note of- was that disappointment. "You _feel_ like him… but you're not my son…. My son…"

The tendril withdrew, and Itachi didn't need any more encouragement to flee the room, opening the door, stepping through it, and slamming it shut behind him one smooth movement that took less than a second. In the back of his terrified mind, he recognized that the door swung outwards and as such didn't disturb the line of salt he'd carefully sprinkled across the doorjamb, and he thanked whoever could be bothered to listen for the small miracle.

The air outside the room was clean and sweet, and Itachi gulped down mouthfuls of it, as thankful for its stale presence that smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and cheap booze as he had been for that first lungful of fresh air he'd received after escaping the hospital. His knees buckled, and the only thing keeping him from face-planting onto the ground was his death grip on the doorknob- at least until his legs completely gave way and he fell forward, directly into Kisame's waiting arms.

"Itachi! What happened?"

Itachi's lower lip trembled; words threatened to spill up his throat from his stomach as his gorge rose, but he managed to keep them down. Then he realized that it wasn't words trying to make it past the barrier in his throat but actual gorge, and he barely managed to push Kisame out of the way before he started dry heaving. He managed to contain the first wave by clapping a hand over his mouth, but the force of the heave drove him to his knees on the floor, and he fell forward on his hands, feeling real vomit start to burn the back of his throat that he now had no way of holding back.

It exploded up from his stomach in a burning wash of acid, and Itachi was only vaguely aware as Kisame shoved something - he didn't know what - under his face to contain the vomit. The force of the heaves wracked his body from his head to his toes; just one more thing to add to the list of things he was helpless against. Even after the entire contents of his stomach had made their way out of his body via his mouth, he couldn't stop dry heaving, not even long enough to breathe. His head swam, his entire body tingling from lack of oxygen so much that he could barely feel the reassuring presence of Kisame's hand rubbing his back, telling him he was alright and that he needed to breathe or he would pass out. Honestly, unconsciousness seemed like a viable alternative to Itachi instead of the hellish nightmare he was currently facing.

Slowly, the shuddering spasms stopped, but Itachi couldn't shake off the trembling in his jello-limbs that took its place. The floor began to seduce him, the feel of the floorboards cool and solid against his palms, and Itachi laid his head down on the wonderfully cold surface, his cheek pressing against the rough grain of the wood. His whole body shook as if trying to shed the dark aura that had enveloped him like a second skin, or perhaps the memories that had surfaced during the encounter.

Why had he thought this was a good idea, again?

Vaguely, Itachi became aware of Kisame's presence, gently rubbing his back with long, smooth strokes. He struggled to push himself up with his quivering, jello-like arms, and Kisame quickly grabbed him under his armpits and hauled him into a sitting position, cradling him against his chest. The warmth of Kisame's body enveloped him, chasing away the chill darkness that had seeped into his core. Feeling a sense of security slowly steal over him, Itachi curled tighter into Kisame's chest, tightly fisting the material of his shirt without the intention of letting go.

Kisame calmly pet Itachi's long hair, which had become damp with the cold sweat that had enveloped his whole body, smoothing it back from his forehead before leaning down. His nose and mouth pressed into Itachi's ruffled hair, providing an anchor for Itachi's emotions to adhere themselves to instead of rampaging chaotically through his body.

"Can you tell me what happened in there?" He whispered against Itachi's hair.

"I… I…" Honestly, Itachi was surprised he could still speak. As it was, his voice was unusually rough. "Sorry, I don't think… I just… I can't… can't relive it again."

Kisame's embrace tightened around him. "Damnit, I knew I should have stopped you from doing it! I knew you were still recovering, and I-"

"'S'not your fault…" Itachi cut up off, tightening his grip on his shirt. "I made the decision…. You told me not to do it…. But, at least, it was worthwhile."

"Worth...while?" The torso Itachi was curled against tensed, and Kisame's head lifted from his hair. "You mean, you did it? You made him… leave?"

"Not… quite…" Itachi shifted, lifting his face so Kisame could get a better look at it. "He's still too unformed to convince peacefully, and I… I wasn't strong enough to deal with him another way. I did manage to put a barrier around the edges of the room, however, so the rest of the house should be safe from his effects for the time being- at least until I can recover enough to figure out what to do next."

The hand on his shoulder gripped harder, almost tight enough to hurt, but Itachi didn't mind. "Recover? Did _he_ do this to you? That bastard- I'll never forgive him!"

"No!" Itachi corrected, struggling into a more vertical position before coughing and sinking back into Kisame's chest. "No, he didn't do anything to me. This is just… bad memories, is all."

"Damn it, I knew I shouldn't have let you go-"

Itachi reached up and placed a soft hand over his mouth, cutting off the waterfall of words. "Don't. It was… my choice. And it needed to be done. You don't know what can happen if situations like these aren't dealt with right away. You haven't seen what can happen when… well, it was my choice. To protect you and everyone else here." His mouth twisted up in a wry smile. "I guess I really am my father's son after all. That was always his creed, you know. The protection of the ignorant masses. No matter how far I run from the Uchiha name, I guess I'll never really escape it."

Kisame pulled Itachi's hand away from his mouth, squeezing it tightly. "Itachi-"

"It's all right, Kisame. That particular battle is one you can't fight for me. It's all internal."

Kisame made as if to respond, but suddenly a familiar sound coming from down the hall caused Itachi to tense, covering Kisame's mouth again to stop him from speaking. "There's someone there," he hissed, just loud enough for the sounds to reach Kisame's ears but low enough that whoever was skulking around the bend in the hallway wouldn't be able to hear him.

Tensing again, Kisame carefully let go of Itachi, depositing him on the floor in a kneeling position and stealing that wonderful warmth away from him - _no, he was not disappointed!_ \- as he faced down the length of the hallway Itachi couldn't see.

"Where?" He murmured under his breath, just loud enough for Itachi's sensitive hearing to pick up.

"That way." Itachi gently inclined his head in the direction the sound had come from. "Between ten and fifteen feet. I can hear breathing."

"Wait here."

Without waiting for Itachi's response, Kisame start off deliberately down the hallway, his steady footsteps unnaturally loud against the floorboards. The sound of breathing abruptly increased in tempo, then froze, as if the person hiding had clapped a hand over their mouth to stop the sound from escaping. A frown played at the corners of Itachi's mouth; why did their breathing pattern sound so familiar? And was it slightly… feminine?

Kisame's loud footfalls echoes past the breather's hiding place, and Itachi heard them give a barely audible sigh as they thought the danger had passed, only for the sound to allow an alert Kisame to pinpoint their location and drag them from out into the open with a shocked cry that again struck Itachi's ears with a familiarity he couldn't quite place.

"Got you, you little sneak! Now there's nowhere for you to-"

"Stop!" Itachi suddenly cried as the identity of the person now in Kisame's grasp hit him. He struggled to get up from his kneeling position, only to have his jelly-like legs refuse to hold his weight and send him back down to the floor. "Stop it, Kisame! Don't hurt her! It's Miru!"

"Miru?!" Kisame instantly dropped his prisoner to the ground, allowing her to splutter as she recovered from his demonically strong grip. "What the hell are you doing here? And why are you wearing that stupid hood? I thought you were the assassin coming back for another shot…" He suddenly trailed off, then his voice grew colder than a frozen lake of salt water. "You aren't the assassin, are you?"

"N-no!" Miru quickly sputtered in a panic, scrabbling backwards until her back hit the wall with a quiet thump. "I'm not a rat, I swear! I just heard voices and came to investigate! I thought it was strange because no one's ever around here this time of night, and that made me suspicious so I decided to hide and listen instead of coming out and risk being attacked. That's the truth, I swear!"

"And how long were you there?"

"I don't know, a couple of minutes? I didn't hear much of your conversation, just the last couple of minutes, after…" She trailed off uncomfortably.

"Yes?" Kisame ground out through gritted teeth, and Itachi could almost hear Miru flinch away from his voice.

"After your… friend was done being sick," she finally managed, spitting out the words like they were poison.

"And you knew it was us?"

"Of course I knew it was you; I'm not fucking stupid!"

"Then why didn't you leave after you realized it was us and not some interlopers? Why did you stay to watch us?"

"Kisame…" Itachi tried to warn, but Kisame's anger got the better of him and he punched the wall directly over Miru's head, causing her to yelp in surprise and fear.

"Why were you spying on us?! Where is your respect for privacy? Do you have sense of decency?!"

"Kisame!"

This time, the word echoed like the crack of a whip down the hallway, causing both Kisame and his prey to freeze. His limbs still shook like unformed jello, but this time Itachi managed to make it to his feet with the help of the wall next to him, and when he was fully upright he sent what would have been a glare if he'd had eyes at the pair.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, Kisame? Are you trying to make enemies of your most tentative allies this early? You already have too many problems to deal with without adding this into the mix! Back away from her this instant and apologize!"

Itachi felt the weight of two shocked gazes on his shoulders amid the silence that followed his outburst, almost causing his knees to buckle and send him back down to the floor, but he only gritted his teeth and held on to his verticality all the more.

"I said now, Kisame!"

Whether it was due to surprise at the bite in his tone or actual obedience, Itachi didn't know, but within a few seconds he heard Kisame shuffle backwards, away from the woman still sitting in the floor, too shocked to move by Itachi's outburst.

"Sorry," he muttered. "That was uncalled for. You were just doing what you thought was right."

"But if it's all the same," Itachi added, taking a few shaky steps toward the pair, "I, for one, would like to hear the answer to his question, Miru. It was asked in the wrong way, but it is important to know why the people around you do the things they do, especially for someone in Kisame's position."

After a few more seconds of stunned silence, Miru drew in on herself and snapped, "Because I don't trust you, obviously! Either of you!"

"You don't trust us?" Kisame echoed in surprise, and Miru gritted her teeth in obvious, audible anger.

"Of course I don't trust you! You abandoned this group years ago, Kisame- do you think we don't remember that? I may have been young at the time - younger than you were, at least - but I remember it as clear as the day it happened, as do the others! You abandoned us, Kisame, abandoned the people here without a backward glance!"

"My father-" Kisame started with a growl, but Miru cut him off again.

"Was convinced that you were coming back! He always said you just needed a little more time, that you would come back to us when you were ready! He believed it so hard, he never took your name off his will as the heir to the gang, even on his deathbed! You don't know how long we argued after he died, deciding whether we should follow his wishes or say the hell with you and get a Boss who would actually care about us!"

Itachi pulled a harsh breath in through his nose; he'd suspected something like this might occur eventually, but not this soon and with one of the more volatile members, like Raiga, not the seemingly level-headed Miru. It just went to show how truly upset she was.

"And when we finally find you, look what we got!" She continued, her voice rising in volume and pitch as her anger also started to boil over. "A 'condition' to your return! The most useless, pathetic lump of flesh to ever enter this house, a place held sacred by our group! This is our base, our _home_ , and the two of you are living in it, wearing our colors, acting like you belong when all you are is a pair of outsiders who fell our way through dumb luck and blind privilege!"

The words echoed in the stillness of the hallway after she finished speaking, her chest heaving with the exertion of emotion. Forcing his shaky legs to move, Itachi walked several steps forward to stand next to Kisame.

"Thank you for sharing your opinion," he said blandly, inclining his head downwards when Kisame appeared to be too frozen to speak. "I appreciate that you told us your true feelings on this matter."

"And that's another thing!" Miru exploded again, this time at Itachi. "Where do you come off saying things like that? What gives you the right to speak for him? And where do you come from, anyway? We broke you out of a god-damn hospital for Kisame! You have nothing, no status, no skills- hell, you're crippled! Disabled! Completely useless! How would you be a benefit to us? What was Kisame thinking when he brought you here? How can we trust a person so self-centered, they don't even realize when they're holding everyone around them back?"

Instantly, Kisame broke from his frozen shock and jumped to Itachi's defense. "You can't-!" He started, but Itachi cut him off with a raised hand.

"'Holding everyone around them back'?" He repeated, letting the words roll around his mouth before spitting them out as if they were poisoned blades. "Is that how you view me? Rendered utterly useless by the loss of my sight? Is that all I am?"

"How can you be any more?"

"How can I not!?" Itachi sank down on his hanches, bringing his face down to the same level as Miru's. "Perhaps you're right not to trust me. After all, I don't give two shits about your second-rate gang here in the slums." Miru gave a noise of outrage at this, but Itachi ignored it and talked over brief protest. "I owe you no allegiance, and you've certainly already made it clear that you don't want me. The only reason I'm here is because of the only man I will _ever_ pledge myself to - body, mind and soul - and that man is Kisame."

Itachi felt Kisame stiffen behind him, and couldn't help the small smile that lifted up the corners of his mouth. "I'm here because he wants to be here," he continued, feeling Kisame touch him gently on the head. "And I will support him in every way I can, because he has command of my respect and loyalty. So you're right not to trust me; I'd just as soon raze this place to the ground as help you, depending on what he asks of me. But if I were you, I would put my trust in Kisame."

"And why is that?" Miru spit back, but her words were starting to lack less bite.

"Because of me," Itachi said simply.

"Because of you? What the fuck kind of reason is that?"

Leaning back on his haunches, Itachi bowed his head. "Because of the place I came from. You didn't break me out of a hospital; you broke me out of a psychiatric ward on the top floor of a hospital where I'd existed in a living hell for the past decade. A place of constant monitoring: twenty-four hour surveillance, whether from a real human or a camera; a heart rate monitor that alerted someone to sedate me if my heart rate got too high- and by 'too high', I mean anything above my resting heart rate of _sleeping_. I spent over four years of my life in a partial coma on a cocktail of drugs that left my body ravaged and my mind too catatonic to care. And even when I recovered enough that I didn't need them, that I _should_ have gone home to recover in better environment, I couldn't because my _father_ , unable to bare the shame of having a son like me, faked my death the moment I was admitted to the hospital. So, I was forced to remain in a padded prison cell for years, knowing an unassisted escape was impossible because I'd helped write the goddamned rulebook for ward security and praying that someone would slip up and bring me something more than a plastic spoon so I could finally end my miserable existence before I had to suffer any more humiliation than I already had."

Kisame's hand tightened on his shoulder. "Itachi…"

"Do you understand now?" Itachi asked, hearing Miru's breathing catch at the question. " _Kisame_ brought me away from there, _Kisame_ saved me from that. And if he has enough compassion to break an undeserving lunatic out of his cage and give him a new life, I'd say he has the fortitude to drag your miserable group out of the mud and give it the run it deserves."

Not waiting for Miru to respond, Itachi pushed himself back to his feet, wobbling a little as the motion proved to be too much for his already overworked equilibrium sensors. He staggered, but Kisame caught him before he could fall again. "That was an impressive speech you gave there," he murmured just loud enough for Itachi to hear, and with a snort the blind man responded in kind.

"Probably too much, but she was irritating me."

Aftering ensuring Itachi was steady on his feet - or at least, that he wasn't going to faceplant if he let go of him - Kisame squatted down in front of Miru and offered her a hand. "I really am sorry for yelling at you earlier. You took me by surprise, and I- well, I overreacted. Here, let me help you up."

Several seconds ticked by in silence as Miru simply stared at the proffered hand, and Itachi thought that perhaps she would shake it off and stand under her own power, then a gentle rustle of cloth told him she had grasped his hand, and they stood together. Kisame took a step back when she had reached her feet, once again resting his hand on the small of Itachi's back for support, but whether he did it unconsciously or purposefully, Itachi couldn't tell. The woman in front of them regarded them silently for a moment before shaking her head with a light rustle of hair.

"Apology accepted."

The words were stilted, but heartfelt, from what Itachi could tell. Beside him, he felt the air move as Kisame inclined his head briefly.

"Thank you."

A few more moments of stilted silence enveloped them in ever-heightening tension until Miru broke it again. The words shattered the tense quiet around them, but somehow made the air seem colder at the same time.

"I should be going. To let you finish your private business in… private."

With that, she turned on her heel and began to walk away, but Kisame called out one last time to stop her.

"Miru?"

"What?" She almost snapped, turning back with an irritated air.

After a brief hesitation, Itachi felt Kisame straighten up taller next to him and square his shoulder. "I want to thank you for your honesty tonight. I understand that you and the others have little trust for me, and I respect that. However, I hope in the future that I can change your minds with my actions, and prove to you that I am worthy of your trust."

"Don't expect it to happen quickly." Miru's voice was harsh, but then her tone softened. "But we're all waiting for that day, as well."

Then she was gone, her footsteps tapping out a rough tempo against the floorboards as she rounded a bend in the hallway and disappeared.

As soon as she was out of sight, Kisame sagged almost comically against Itachi, who stumbled under his weight, almost sending both of them back down to the floor again.

"Kisame! Are you trying to kill me?!"

"Sorry," Kisame sighed as he stood up straight again, pulling Itachi back against his chest for support. "That was just… I can't even describe it. I had no idea they felt that way."

"Really?" Itachi asked in surprise. "I thought it was obvious. The only reason I didn't mention it already was because I thought you already knew."

"Thought I already knew-! Of course I didn't know! Itachi, how did you figure it out?"

"Subtle inflections of praise when speaking about the old Boss, even the time he spent being useless, and slight hostility when speaking about or to you. Really, it was so thick in their voices I thought you would have seen it on their faces without me needing to mention it."

Heaving a sigh, Kisame dragged a hand through his hair in an overly pained genture. "Apparently they're better at masking their true emotions in their faces than they are at voice acting. I'm glad I've got you keeping tabs on the other end for me so we can cover both sides." His voice suddenly turned a little playful. "So, any other little tidbits you picked up from listening to them talk you haven't told me yet, whether or not you think I already know?"

"No, other than the fact that I'm pretty sure Raiga and Miru either used to have a 'thing' or are currently in the middle of said 'thing', but I'm sure even you would have picked that up by how they subconsciously gravitate to each other-"

"Wait, what? Miru and Raiga? Like, _together_ together have a thing? Where the fuck did you get that from?"

"...I stand corrected."

Both let out a gentle laugh at Itachi's dry comment, and Itachi leaned his head against Kisame's strong chest. He was so tired that he doubted he could even stand on his own anymore, even if it was required of him. With a sigh, he let his hand slide down Kisame's shirtfront until it dangled listlessly at his side.

"This was either a disastrous setback or a miracle," he said, referring to the altercation with Miru.

"Which one are you leaning more towards?"

"Hmm…" Itachi gave it a moment's thought. "I'd say closer to miracle right now, but that could always change without notice. It looks like you still have your work cut out for you, Kisame."

"Well, with you by my side, how can I fail?"

A secret smile stole across Itachi's face. "How indeed?"


	15. Ab Ordine Libertas

So... I was writing this chapter when I realized it had already hit over 12,000 words... and I was nowhere near done. But I really didn't want to wait much longer before posting another chapter, so I decided to split it as best I could and post the first half. The good news is because of that, I already have quite a bit for the next chapter written, so it might even be as close as Sunday that it goes up!

Anyway, have fun reading! Addi out!

* * *

"This is f-frustrating!" Hinata complained, breaking Neji's concentration.

She was meditating for her regular training, while he had taken the opportunity to perform some last-minute meditation of his own to clear his aura before his meeting with the elders. He'd tried to do it the night before, after Shikamaru had left, but the attempt had only met with marginal success. Despite all his efforts, Neji had been unable to focus properly and had barely managed to scrub all traces of the shadowy phantom away before he'd given up and hoped that a night of good rest would do the job instead. It hadn't, but it had been better than nothing.

"What's frustrating?" He asked, opening his eyes to see his cousin's irritated face.

"I c-can't d-do it! Even after you h-helped m-me yesterd-day, I still can't d-do it-t! I thought I'd be able t-to today, b-but I still c-can't!"

A wash of gentle emotion rushed through Neji; Hinata never failed to bring out the best in him. "You'll get it in time, Hinata. Remember, I helped you yesterday to achieve it once; I didn't give you some mystical secret that will make it happen instantly. All I did was give you a taste, so you'd know what it was like and try all the harder. I can see that you've improved, even since yesterday, but you still need time."

"T-time." Hinata pulled a wry face. "Th-that's the only answer I g-get from-m anyone n-now."

"I'm sorry I can't give you a different one."

"N-no, I understand. The l-logic is solid… it's just frustrating to hear the same thing over and over."

"I can empathize." Neji allowed his gaze to drift over to the clock on his wall. It was close to nine-fifteen; his meeting with elders was scheduled to start at ten, which meant it really started at nine fifty because they were sadistic old bastards. It was a fifteen minute walk back to the Hyuuga compound - or a twenty minute drive; cities were irritating like that sometimes - so Neji didn't have much time before he had to end the lesson and head on his way. Not enough time to do something constructive now that both of their concentrations had been broken, at least.

Oh, well. This would have to do.

Trying to hide his sigh as he stood, his joints cracking to relieve the pressure of staying so long in the same position, Neji carefully pulled his hair forward over his shoulder and then offered a hand to Hinata. "We might as well be done for today. I don't think we could do anything of value in the time we have remaining, so we might as well pack up."

"And then you c-can make an extra good impression on the elders by b-being extra early," she grinned up at him, taking the proffered hand and pulling herself to to her feet.

Neji couldn't help but answer her smile with one of his own. "I can certainly try."

He turned to gather his coat in preparation for their walk through the city suburbs - even if it wasn't raining, in Seattle one always had to prepared for the advent of the almost ever-present drizzle - his hair sliding over his shoulders in a disorganized mass. Unlike most days, when he gathered it together and bound it close to the end, today Neji had opted to leave it completely down. The reason for his unusual fashion choice was marked on his neck in the form of a purplish bruise, courtesy of one shadowy phantom with a wickedly sharp set of teeth. The color had faded from the day before, but only slightly, and wearing a turtleneck to cover it up today simply wasn't an option, not with his meeting. However, showing it off at said meeting also wasn't an option, so he'd been forced to choose the next best thing, besides covering it up with makeup he didn't have and didn't know how to use: the highest-collared jacket he owned and loose hair. He hoped that both would be enough to do the job.

Suddenly, a finger at Neji's neck shocked him nearly enough to drop his raincoat, brushing his hair aside.

"Why do you have your hair d-down today, Neji? And what's this bruise h-here? Some kind of bug b-bite?"

Apparently, it was not.

Neji's first instinct was to clap a hand over the hickey defensively and whirl around with a glare at his assaulter, but he stayed himself just in time. This was Hinata, after all, his little cousin - no, little _sister_ \- who jumped at the sound of a clap and had fainted from much less. He couldn't do that to her; she might be shocked past speechlessness. Gently dislodging Hinata's fingers, he turned around and gave her a smile that he hoped didn't look too fake.

"It's nothing, just a bruise I got. It's a little unseemly, so I'm covering it up with my hair today."

Well, it wasn't technically a lie, though Neji did feel guilty when he saw the answer accepted so easily by his innocent little cousin. How had she reached the age of sixteen without knowing what a hickey was, though? Neji answered that question in his head as soon as he'd asked it: the same way he had - through total censorship of the materials available to him until he'd moved away and been able to find his own information.

"It looks g-good on you like that!" Hinata chirped happily, and Neji's tight smile loosened at the sight. She was just too precious.

"Glad to know you approve," he chuckled amiably, shrugging on his jacket and then offering her his arm. "Shall we be off?"

"Y-yep!"

* * *

The Hyuuga compound, the main headquarters of the Hyuuga organization and the private residence of its most influential members, was a cluster of building in the outskirts of the Seattle suburbs, each one distinct and separate in function, but close enough architecturally that it was clear they belonged together. Their purpose and ownership was kept secret from the general public, so even passerby often overlooked their grey stone facade after the first few glances, leaving the mystery wrapped up in a seemingly second-rate appearance for a more intrepid soul to undertake. If one took it upon themselves to be that intrepid soul and asked around for more information, they would quickly find that there was none to be found, except for the gossipy old woman next door who says that the only people she sees come and go regularly are young fellows and a teenaged girl, so it must be some kind of swanky private university or high school for rich folks. Everyone knows she exaggerates everything, though, so her words aren't to be trusted much.

An iron gate no outsider ever dares touch blocked the way into the compound - whether private residence, business or campus is their guess of the day - but Neji pushed it aside without any qualm, holding it open just long enough to allow Hinata to slip in after him before carefully latching it closed again. A quick glance at his watch told him that it was ten thirty-three; he couldn't help but feel his lips twitch up at the good news. He could find a place to hang his jacket, see Hinata off, and still be ten minutes early for being ten minutes early to his ten o'clock appointment. He had timed that quite nicely.

A quiet bustle greeted him when he pushed open the door to main building as people drifted to and fro, some leisurely, with a coffee in hand, and some with more hurry in their step. All were as silent as they could be, however, avoiding any excess noise in the hallowed entrance hall with its high-vaulted ceiling and the motto of the Hyuuga family scrawled across the floor in stalky gold lettering: _Ab Ordine Libertas_. From order comes freedom.

Ironic, considering he'd never found any freedom in the order imposed upon him.

That kind of thinking was straying close too dangerous territory, however, so Neji quickly shut the thought down and placed a hand at the small of Hinata's back, guiding her to a small room adjoining the antechamber where he could hang up his damp raincoat, revealing the smart suit jacket and high-collared shirt he was wearing underneath. His hair had been frizzled by the rain, another reminder of why he usually kept it back, but Neji managed to at least minorly tame it by running a few fingers through the damp strands before turning back to Hinata.

"How do I look? Professional enough for a meeting with the elders?"

Letting out a gentle giggle, Hinata reached up to tuck a particularly frizzy lock of hair behind Neji's ear, then gave him a thumbs up. "All b-better!"

"Excellent! I knew I could count on you." He let his hand rest on Hinata's head for a moment before turning to stare at the door of the coatroom. "I should go. I don't want to be late."

But his feet refused to move. Gritting his teeth, Neji mustered all his willpower and dragged himself a single step forward, but was suddenly stopped by a pair of small arms thrown about his waist from behind him. Hinata's face buried into the back of his jacket, bunching the material, but Neji couldn't bring himself to mind. His hands dropped down to cover her tiny ones, and he forced himself to speak in a jovial tone.

"Hey, what's this? You know I need to go, right?"

Hinata muttered something that was lost in the folds of his jacket, her face pressed firmly into the dark fabric.

"I can't understand you if you do that, Hinata."

"I don't want you to go," she murmured quietly, pulling her face back from his jacket just enough that he could understand her words. "I have a b-bad feeling about it."

Neji looked up at the ceiling, his eyes losing themselves in the dazzle of fluorescent lights, so unlike the drifting clouds forming shapes before his eyes that he knew lay beyond the manmade sky. "I don't think there's a one of us who doesn't have a bad feeling before going to see them," he whispered, but the words were quiet and meant for her alone.

She stiffened as they sunk in, then Neji allowed his facade of professionalism to drop over his features and carefully detangled her arms from around his waist. "I have to go now, Hinata. Please let go."

She did as he bid, albeit reluctantly, and Neji strode to the door of the coat room before turning back to her. "I'll see you soon, Hinata."

"G-good luck," she stuttered quietly, nervously shuffling her feet as she glanced up to gauge his reaction.

 _She really was too adorable for her own good_ , Neji decided as his professional mask cracked from an indulgent smile that he allowed for a few moments before closing it off again. "Thank you. Take care."

Neji stepped from the room before he could convince himself otherwise, hurrying off down the all-too-familiar labyrinth of hallways before Hinata emerged from the coatroom. He didn't want her to watch him leave.

His footsteps tapped out a quick rhythm against the stone floors, much faster than he normally walked. He had learned a long time ago that if he looked like he was in a rush around here, less people were apt to stop him for a quick chat or ask why he hadn't been around as much lately. Not that Neji normally minded exchanging a few pleasant words with the flow of foot traffic around him - all of them were, at most, distant cousins, after all - but today he wasn't in the mood, and the less people that talked to him, the smaller the chance that someone would see the mark on his neck and call him out on it. Damn Shikamaru and his sharp teeth!

 _You didn't seem to mind it when it was happening_ , the cheeky inner part of his mind reminded him, but Neji promptly took the voice, hog-tied it in barbed wire, gagged it with a handkerchief, and then hurled it into a deep, dark chasm at the back of his mind, all in the span of a single step.

 _Your sass is not currently appreciated._

He hadn't been told where to meet the elders, but then again, he didn't need to be; they would be where they always were, in an intimidating room in a dark corner of the building that no one ventured to unless they had business there. As Neji approached the hallway that held the set of grey double doors which led to the elders' room, he met fewer and fewer people until he was alone, his footsteps echoing along the hall with singular clarity. It was only now that he allowed himself to slow, the tempo of his footsteps decreasing to a more manageable beat.

The double doors came into view as Neji rounded one last corner, entering into a new hallway that was different from the ones he'd been making his purposeful way through until now. It was darker, both in material and in lighting, and gave off the aura of an old stone castle if one squinted hard enough. The double doors themselves were grey monstrosities made to look like stone, though Neji knew that they were too light to be actual stone, and had the same Latin phrase painted across them as the floor of the entrance hall: _Ab Ordine Libertas_. Above that was inscribed a set of scales, the universal and indisputable sign for justice. Neji had to repress a shiver at the sight; no matter how many times he saw them, they still made him uncomfortable.

A line of chairs sat across from the double doors as a kind of pseudo-waiting room, where those inside the room could clearly see those who were waiting outside if the door was opened. They were all unoccupied except for one, where a young man was sitting with a hunched back, his forehead resting on his clenched hands. Neji's first thought was that he wasn't a Hyuuga, or if he was, he wasn't a full-blooded one, because his hair was blond, not the light brown known as the signature look of the Hyuuga family. Then he remembered that only Hyuuga were allowed to enter the building, let alone make it this far, so it was more likely that he was some kind of distant branch member, a cousin of a cousin or the like, but Neji would need to see his eyes to be certain.

Not that he cared that much about the man to find out. Flicking his gaze straight ahead of him, Neji sat down several chairs away from the man and checked his watch. Nine forty-six. Perfect.

The only sound in the hallway came from their breathing, and Neji found the sound rather soothing. He closed his eyes and focused all his energy on calming down his nerves - which were barely buzzing, but that could change at any moment and it was best to be preemptive - and checking his aura a final time to ensure he hadn't missed anything when he'd been clearing it earlier. It wasn't perfect, but it would hold up against all but the closest scrutiny. Nodding motionlessly to himself, Neji opened his eyes just in time to see the double doors open and release a young woman. The man holding the door open caught Neji's eye, and they nodded briefly to each other before the door closed again. Neji stood up, knowing it would soon reopen to admit him.

As he adjusted his cufflinks, the young woman who had just exited the court of the Hyuuga elders caught his eye. Unlike the young man, Neji could tell by her long, rich brown hair and pale eyes that she was a pure-blooded Hyuuga, and from one of the more respected lineages, if her delicate features were anything to judge by. After gleaning this information, Neji's gaze slid over her to rest on the door, judging her to be of no more interest to him - at least, until he heard her sniffle, and glanced back to see that her hand rested on her stomach and that she was crying.

The blond man had stood up as soon as the doors had opened and let her out, and now he ran to the woman and seized her shoulders, giving Neji the opportunity to see that his eyes were, indeed, the pale color of eyes capable of the Byakugan.

"What did they say?" He asked frantically, searching the woman's tearstained face for a glimmer of hope. "What was their verdict?"

"They…" The woman started, then her voice cracked and a look of wondering hope overtook her face, as if she still didn't quite believe the magnitude of the good news she'd gotten. "They gave their blessing on our marriage, and they said we could keep the baby!"

Neji had to hide his surprise at the words when absolute joy overtook the young man's face and he crushed the woman to him in a tight embrace. Considering their obvious difference in standing, they were extremely lucky the elders had ruled in their favor. They might not have been so lucky if, for example, one of them had a pre-existing betrothal agreement. Perhaps that meant the elders were in a good mood today, and he'd get off lightly as well - though, he still didn't know the reason he had been called here in the first place.

Overcome by happiness, the young man and woman pulled back from their embrace, then suddenly the blond man reached out to gently caress the woman's jaw, then pulled her forward into a tender kiss that spoke of hopeful new beginnings. The abject love on their features made Neji blink, and he looked away before he knew what he was doing, suddenly feeling like he was intruding on the private space their pure emotions had created. A hollow feeling blossomed in Neji chest, and he gritted his teeth to ignore it, deciding not to ponder its ramifications since he had already thrown the snide voice that usually chimed in to give him helpful yet unappreciated insight into the deepest, darkest hole in the back of his mind. Besides, he couldn't allow himself to get distracted or he might end up with a worse verdict than they had received.

As he waited for the doors to reopen, the happy couple beside him broke apart, resting their foreheads together in a gesture of love, their faces wreathed in breathless smiles. The second hand on Neji's watch ticked loudly into the silence, the only other sound besides their breathing, panting as if they'd both run marathon. The door was going to open soon. They shouldn't be there when it did; it was an unspoken rule. Should he warn them? Neji flicked his gaze sideways, taking in their breathless appearances. It didn't look like they would move anytime soon. They weren't his problem, he harshly reminded himself, but something about their faces made him balk.

"Excuse me."

They both jumped at the sound of his voice, faces turning red from more than happiness as they realized they weren't alone. Neji met their embarrassed gazes head on before turning back to face the door and fiddling with his cufflinks again.

"That door is going to reopen in a few seconds at most. You don't want to be here when it does. They might… might be angry. Angry enough to…"

He let the words trail off, but by the look of fear on the woman's face, he knew she understood his insinuation. The young man grabbed her hand and bowed once in Neji's direction with a quick, "Thank you, sir!" before pulling her down the hallway.

 _Sir._ The word pulled a wry grimace to Neji's lips. The young man was around his age, at the most a year younger and likely older. As he watched them flee down the hallway, stopping at the end for the young man to take his new fiance and swing her around before kissing her again, he felt a sudden urge to call out to them again.

But that would be frowned upon, so he simply said a quiet, "Congratulations," sure that they wouldn't have heard it, before turning back to the door.

If his counting had been correct, the door would open in between fifteen to thirty seconds. The elders had likely been ready for him the moment the young woman had left the room, but they had a habit of leaving people waiting as a show of power; not often for long, but just enough to make the person unsettled and-

The doors opened, and the doorkeeper gestured silently for Neji to enter the room. He had to fight to keep his gaze from narrowing in suspicion as he did so. Only eight seconds. They were early; they must be eager for something.

He glanced down at the watch on his wrist as the door boomed shut behind him, the broken sound ominous in the cold silence of the room. Nine fifty on the dot.

"Neji," the elderly man with graying hair called from his perch at the highest seat in the front of the courtroom, opening his arms in a gesture of welcome. On his right hand winked a signet ring, the gemstone, Neji knew from experience, set in a sharp clawed fitting. "It's been quite some time, hasn't it?"

Neji bowed his head, avoiding looking the man directly in the face. "Yes, Lord Hyuuga."

"Oh, come now; you needn't be so formal!" The Elder chided, though there was steel beneath his outwardly friendly tone.

 _So that's how today is going to go_ , Neji thought listlessly.

"Yes, Grandfather."

"I believe you spoke with several of us about your recent trip to the east coast in a more private setting," the Elder mused, rubbing a hand over a chin carpeted in grey stubble. "But it's been almost a year since we've had you in here with all of us. Tell me, how did that trip go again?"

A knot of fear formed in Neji's throat at the request, through he instantly set about dissolving it for fear the elders would notice and question him further than he could handle being questioned. _We're going through that again?_ He mentally cursed. _I thought that round of questioning was already finished!_

However, Neji could not afford to let his dissatisfaction show, so he squared his shoulders and addressed the room at large with the statement he'd carefully prepared and given several times before.

"Sasuke Uchiha called me to request a second pair of eyes for an unusually thick density of spectral energy; I readily agreed, thinking it would be a good chance for the two of us to work together in a low-pressure environment and for Hinata to see an Uchiha and a Hyuuga working in tandem, since I am her mentor and would bring her with me. However, we soon started investigating rumors of a group of wraiths and I deemed it too dangerous for Hinata to join us, so she was left in a safe place most of the time. We eventually concluded that there are no wraiths there currently, just a high number of phantoms, but there have been wraiths in the past."

It was very carefully worded not to be a lie; the elders, even without their Byakugan activated, were perceptive enough to see through a lie in seconds. Neji almost held his breath as he listened to the mutters around him swell, then subside without anyone raising their voice against his explanation.

"And how did the development go?" A voice to his left close to the floor startled Neji, almost jumping him. He kept the urge in check, however, and turned to see the elder that had spoken, recognizing him as the man who organized the teams formed from one Uchiha and one Hyuuga.

"I'm sorry?"

"The development," the elder repeated with a frown creasing his already wrinkled forehead. "Between you and the Uchiha boy. Did you work well together? Could you do so in the future?"

Neji inclined his head to the elder. "At first, no. Our personalities clashed and we had many… differing opinions that made cooperation difficult. As time passed, however, we grew more used to each other, and by the time I left we were quite comfortable working together, so on the whole, I would say it was a success and that we could easily work together in the future."

Mutters of approval echoed through the chamber, and Neji let himself relax a little. He had said the right thing. The elder in charge of the Hyuuga-Uchiha teams nodded to himself and made a note on a piece of paper resting in front of him, and Neji knew the need for his attention had been dismissed, so he looked back to the Elder in the position of most power, his paternal grandfather.

"Is that the reason I was called here, Grandfather? I can give a more detailed report here if all of you would like, or I can submit one in writing if you prefer that."

But the Elder waved the words away. "No, no; that wasn't why you were summoned. That was just curiosity on my part."

 _Only curiosity?!_ Neji had to fight to keep his eyes from widening. In that case, he might not have even needed to give an in-depth oral report, and might have even gotten away with a simple, 'It was fine.' Fuck! Had he screwed things up and accidentally piqued the elders' curiosity, interesting them in grilling him even more than he already had been? Luckily, Neji surmised by darting his gaze around the hallway, none of the elders besides the one who had already spoken seemed interested enough to ask him any more questions, so he allowed himself to relax again as his Grandfather continued.

"We actually have two points we want to address today. The first concerns a sudden pulse of energy felt throughout the city several days ago. It wasn't felt all the way out here, but we've had several reports come in from people who were closer to the city, all detailing the same kind of energy spike. However, a report from you was not counted among those, so we were wondering if you felt the spike, or were, in fact, inside the city boundaries at all."

All sense of security left Neji as the words drop from his grandfather's lips like the shells of an artillery bomber into the sudden deathly quiet of the room. Damn that Shikamaru and his ego! Neji had warned him, but had he listened?! Of course not!

Then the last part of the speech hit Neji. _...inside the city boundaries at all._ Shit. That wasn't good. A Hyuuga wasn't allowed to leave the boundaries of the area he was assigned to without formal permission. They weren't accusing him of anything yet, but that was as close as it could get. He had to talk his way out of this one, and _not_ fast; preferably slowly and logically, so the elders wouldn't have any unanswered questions that would come back to bite him later.

Taking a deep breath to steady the subtle shaking of his fist that he hoped no one noticed, though it was almost certain that at least one person had, Neji looked his grandfather squarely in the eye. "I assume you're referring to the surge in spectral energy that occurred at approximately eleven forty-seven AM two days ago, centered near the coastal side of the city. I felt it, but I was in my apartment on this side of the city, so I only felt it faintly."

Out of the corners of his eyes, Neji could see the elders occupying the lower seats turn and mutter to one another, but his grandfather refused to break eye contact. "And yet you did not write us a report on your findings?"

Neji quelled his thundering heartbeat, marshalling his thoughts for the best way to get him out of this situation. "I apologize," he started, bowing his head and breaking eye contact with the Elder. _Always admit when you mess up and apologize before they can accuse you. Rule number two for dealing with the elders. Right behind 'Never - ever - lie'._ "I will admit that owing to my trip to the East Coast lasting longer than I had originally intended, I have spent the last few days catching up on work that had built up over the period, and haven't had the time to send in a report even if I intended to."

"Even if you intended to?" Neji looked up just in time to see his grandfather's gaze tighten. "So you admit you weren't going to send one in."

"Yes." Neji could hear surprised, unapproving titters coming from all sides of the room, but he ignored them and foraged ahead. "As I said, I was overworked. I was tired and not thinking correctly." _Truth._ "And I was far from the source. I likely didn't see it as as much of a threat as others might have." _Also true, but not for that reason. Let them draw their own conclusions._ "In addition, I assumed that if I felt the surge, it could be felt here as well and there would be no need for me to send in a report. I'm actually surprised I haven't been contacted by my supervisors about it yet." _Starting to stray a little further from the truth. I'd 'feared', not 'assumed'._

"Indeed." The Elder's gaze hardened. "So you slacked off in the attempt that someone else would do your work for you?"

Neji winced at the ice in his tone. He supposed he would be lucky if he got off with a harsh reprimand and a light punishment for this, but it was better than what he would get if they knew the truth. "Wh-whn you say it like that… Y-yes."

"Well, don't do it again."

Neji blinked, sure he couldn't have heard that correctly. "Wh-what?"

"Try harder so as to not let it happen again," the Elder clarified.

"I… I'm sorry," Neji faltered, confusion drawing his brows together. "Am I not being punished?"

The Elder's eyebrows raised. "Do you want to be punished?"

"N-no! Not at all!" Neji hurriedly assured him, raising both hands in front of his chest in a gesture of panic. "I hadn't considered it important before I was summoned here, but now that I was, I just… assumed I would be."

"Hmm." The Elder steepled his fingers in front of him, then laid his chin on them as he looked down at Neji. "Neji, I'll be frank with you: you are a very important asset to our system. Even as young as you are, your organizational skills are among the best we have at our disposal, and your power is nothing to scoff at either. For the better of three years, you've worked tirelessly for us, and this is the first documented mistake you've ever made. We're not about to punish you for that to such an extent that it disrupts the delicate balance to our system, not after all the work you've done to strengthen that balance. Instead, we're putting it down as a reprimand in your file and instructing you not to let it happen again."

Neji blinked as the information sunk in. They weren't going to punish him… because they needed him? Suddenly, something that had been bothering him for a long time clicked. His uncle, Hizashi Hyuuga, had recommended him for this position when he'd been barely eighteen, far too young for the responsibility. He'd thrived despite that somehow, and become an efficient and necessary piece of the Hyuuga machine… to the point that even the Elders couldn't move him. It's not that they didn't want to punish him… they _couldn't._ He was now untouchable. The job Hizashi had given him all those years hadn't been an attempt to get him to fold under the immense pressure and disgrace himself… it had been to protect him.

But that realization left Neji with one more uncomfortable question: If the Hyuuga elders couldn't control him with the threat of punishment, what else would they use?

As if to answer his unspoken thoughts, Neji's grandfather cleared his throat and addressed him again. "Well, moving on. As I said, we had two points of interest in mind when we summoned you here today. The first, happily, is dealt with. Now, it comes to the second."

The Elder's eyes sharpened to blades that stabbed Neji's chest as he gazed up at the man who held absolute control over the entire Hyuuga family, and he suddenly found it hard to breathe. Something lurked there in his grandfather's face that Neji was unable to pin down or solidly identify, but even just a glimpse of it was enough to freeze the blood in his veins to solid ice.

"How has the relationship been between you and Hinata? We're considering speeding up the timeline of your betrothal."

* * *

Hinata flopped down on her bed with a sigh, her phone landing on the covers next to her and denting her comforter. Ever since they'd come back from that trip to the East Coast, Neji had been acting strange and it was bothering her. He'd been acting especially weird today, even if he'd had to go see the elders. Nerves could only count for so much. Something was wrong, and it was hurting her that he wouldn't tell her what it was.

Sighing, Hinata rolled onto her side, staring at her silent phone. The only person who ever contacted her was Neji, and he would be in his meeting now, so there was no chance he'd text her… but she had given her number to that trio of stalkers earlier that morning. She'd expected at least one of them to have sent her a message before now, even just a 'Hey, programmed your number into my phone, this my number', but there was nothing there. Rolling back onto her back, Hinata let out another sigh. Perhaps she shouldn't have gotten her hopes up so much. They were all older than her - even the youngest was at least a year her elder - and they were Neji's friends. They wouldn't want to hang out with a silly kid like her.

Just as she allowed her eyes to drift shut, however, Hinata heard a buzz coming from beside her head. Moving faster than she had thought possible, she grabbed the phone and sat up, looking down at the screen to see a notification for a message from an unknown number. WIth trembling fingers, she tapped the notification and unlocked her phone to read the message.

 _Hey, Hinata! This is Udon from Konohamaru's phone. He forbade us from texting you because he wanted to be the first one, but he's been writing and rewriting what his first message to you should be for the past hour, and we got tired of waiting so I decided to give him a little help._

This was followed almost immediately by a second message, this time in all caps:

 _NO I WAS NOT!_

Hinata had to stifle a giggle at the sight. It was so like him; she could almost hear Konohamaru's voice shouting the words.

After a few seconds, the phone vibrated several times in Hinata's hand, rapidly displaying a series of new messages.

 _OH_

 _Um_

 _Well this is awkward_

 _Hi, Hinata_

A grin spread across Hinata's face as her fingers flew over the screen, typing up a reply.

 _Hi, Konohamaru_

As the seconds ticked by as no response came, the smile started to slip from Hinata's face. Why wasn't he replying? Had she said something wrong?

Half a minute later, just when she'd been about let her phone drop back to the bed and give up, a new message came, but from a different unknown number.

 _Hey, Hinata, this is Moegi. Don't worry about radio silence from Konohamaru; I think you broke him. What did you even say? I think he'll need a few minutes to recover, but he'll be fine. Eventually. Probably._

In the middle of typing up a reply, Hinata's phone buzzed again, this time with a message from a third unknown number.

 _This is Udon- and my real number, not me from another phone. I have to thank you for whatever you said to Konohamaru; his face is completely priceless right now._

This was followed closely by a blurry candid of Konohamaru staring at his phone with wide eyes, looking like he wasn't sure if the world had just been handed to him or his phone was going to blow up in his face, and Hinata found herself once again stifling soft laughter.

 _Maybe,_ she thought, programming all three numbers into her phone, where they almost doubled her existing contacts list, _maybe Neji is onto something. Maybe it's better to be a child for as long as I can. Because these childish things aren't going to last forever, and eventually I'm going to have to learn to shield myself._


	16. A Revelation and Betrothal

Hi again! So this took... a lot longer than anticipated. Every time I thought I was getting near the end, I managed to squeeze out another five pages. So... yeah. At least it's here now.

Thanks to Falainakorna for thanking me for coming back! It touched my heart, it really did. I'm glad you're enjoying the story as much as you are.

And I never liked the elder either, SoraROCK. ;)

* * *

"How has the relationship been between you and Hinata? We're considering speeding up the timeline of your betrothal."

The sound of Neji's blood rushing through his veins whited out everything else around him, until all he could focus on was the looks of triumph on the faces of his grandfather and the other elders. _So this is how they plan to control me_ , he thought without emotion, too shocked to even feel the anger he knew was boiling throughout his body. _If they can't threaten me directly, they can threaten those around me that I care about._

Even when Neji had gotten over his shock enough to speak, he wasn't sure how to respond. This particular battle was one he had been fighting for almost four years now, since before his eighteenth birthday when he'd been made aware of the betrothal arrangement between him and his precious little cousin… and when he'd truly learned to fear the elders for the first time. They'd presented him with a betrothal agreement bearing both his and Hinata's signatures, both from when they were very young, Hinata barely able to write her own name- a betrothal agreement he'd had no memory of. No matter how young he was, Neji was sure that he would have remembered signing something this life-altering, so he knew that the elders must have tricked them into signing the document.

Hinata still didn't know, and Neji was fighting to make sure she never knew. If he could get the betrothal annulled before she turned eighteen, when the elders currently planned on announcing the engagement, all traces of it would disappear from documented archives - as did all failed plans of the Hyuuga elders. At least their arrogance could be counted on for some good. But if they were planning on moving up the betrothal… then his window of time for securing the annulment before Hinata would find out about the betrothal had dramatically shortened.

The first time Neji had been informed of the betrothal, he'd protested as soon his voice had returned from the shocked corner it had been hiding in, but his arguments had been largely composed of moral and ethical arguments and they'd been shot down almost immediately by the cold logic of the elders. He'd since done research to back up his case, but his pleas for additional hearings had gone unanswered for years, leaving him with little to work with. Still, he'd prepared for the moment when he could present his case again, and perhaps this time his words would have more effect.

Carefully tracking the faces of all the elders he could see without turning his head, Neji inclined his head again in an arrogant mockery of a bow. "Hinata and I… are fine, but if I am allowed, I would like to take this opportunity to raise my voice in a respectful protest of your decision."

"Respectful protest?" The Elder raised his eyebrows, traces of ill-concealed amusement pulling at the corners of his mouth. "I believe you've already made your views on this marriage quite clear… but, if you endeavor not to take up more of our time than you have allotted, we will hear your protest."

"Thank you, Grandfather." Neji bowed again, but lower this time; the humbling gesture was tinged with a modicum of actual respect. "As you well know, I have been against this arranged marriage from the start, but I respect the wishes of my elders and will follow any necessary order given me. However, recently I have gained some new information which I hope will further my case in your reconsideration of the betrothal between Hinata and I. Like any other Hyuuga, I have the well-being and reputation of the family foremost in my mind as I share this with you."

Neji's grandfather's expression lost some of its amused surety, clearly not expecting Neji to have prepared a statement of such high caliber. Some of his colleges were even muttering amongst themselves, looking intrigued by his words.

"And what might that be?" He snapped almost waspishly, a tone Neji didn't fail to notice.

Straightening his back to the utmost degree, Neji fearlessly locked eyes with his grandfather.

"It is illegal in the state of Washington to marry a first cousin."

The room exploded in a flurry of mutters and whispered comments spoken just loud enough to carry through the dull din - "Is he right?" "I didn't know that." "Has this ever been a problem before?" "I don't think we've tried to arrangement a marriage between members of this close relation for a hundred years of more; the laws are likely to have changed." - but Neji kept his eyes glued to his grandfather's, challenging him to speak out against the truth he had just spoken. He appeared to be stunned for a moment, then his eyes narrowed and he raised a hand, silently demanding quiet from the other elders gathered there.

"And you know this how, exactly?" He hissed, an undercurrent of malice leaking into his otherwise restrained tone.

"Revised Code of Washington, Title 26, Chapter 4, Section 20," Neji stated coldly, allowing no emotion to bleed into his voice. "Subsection 1, part b: Marriage is prohibited when the spouses are nearer of kin to each other than second cousins."

The room exploded into chatter once more, and this time the Elder was only able to quiet it down by demanding silence with a shout. Once he received it, he sent a glare to a younger man - younger by the elders' standards; he was perhaps fifty - sitting in a chair at the ground level.

"Look it up."

For a brief moment, the man looked shocked that he had actually been addressed by the head Elder, then he burst into a flurry of activity, dragging open a laptop on his desk and searching for something with a few economical clicks and tapping of keys on the keyboard. His brow furrowed in concentration as he unconsciously muttered what he was looking for.

"Revised Code… Title twenty-six… chapter… chapter…"

"Four," Neji supplied, earning him a grateful look from the man and a glare from his grandfather. "And section twenty."

"Ah, thank you…" It took a few more seconds of tapping, then the man scrolled through a screen, his eyes skimming paragraphs Neji couldn't read through the back of his laptop screen. As Neji watched, his eyebrows travelled further and further up his forehead as he read until he sat back, rubbing his eyes, and conceded, "He's right. Illegal to marry anyone of closer relation than a second cousin."

Neji carefully concealed the triumph coursing through his system from his face; it wouldn't do to let his grandfather see it, though it was difficult in the face of the Elder's expression. He was so angry, his old, leathery skin was turning a delicate shade of puce.

Gritting his teeth in obvious annoyance now, the Elder once again shouted the muttering occupants of the room for quiet. "I said silence, you fools!" Silence once again reigned in the room, various elders around the room instantly freezing, not matter the position they were in; some were caught with their mouths open, in the middle of a word or sentence, and one woman in the corner of Neji's vision was even frozen in the middle of a sneeze.

By the ugly glare on his grandfather's face, Neji knew that he had managed to piss him off- not an easy feat, nor something that should be attempted often for safety's sake, but it meant that he was succeeding in making him at least think about the cons of the betrothal, even if he wasn't actively reconsidering it. It was a step in the right direction, if nothing else.

The one thing that worried Neji was that the Elder didn't look concerned at all, just irritated, like someone might get at a fly buzzing around their head in a late summer's mid-afternoon, too hot for excess movement: it was a nuisance, but a crushable one if they could summon up the energy to do it. This worry expanded when Neji watched an altogether ugly smile spread across his grandfather's face.

"It is illegal _in the state of Washington_ to marry a first cousin. That means other states allow it, yes?"

His gaze bored into Neji's the whole time he was speaking, and by the end of the question, Neji felt his mouth go dry. He couldn't say that he hadn't anticipated a roundabout solution like this being proposed, but he'd hoped the new information would give him more pause than it had. Swallowing once to get rid of his dry mouth, Neji felt one hand curl into a fist at his side.

"Yes," he admitted. "Nineteen of them, to be exact."

The elder snapped his fingers to catch the attention of the man who had looked up the law before. "Look it up."

In the same way as before, the man jumped at being addressed, then set about his task with fervor. After about two minutes of waiting, in which no sound was heard but the clicks of furious typing and the harsh breathing of the Elder, the man leaned back with a nod. "He's correct. Nineteen states in the U.S hold marriage between first cousins to be legal, the closest being California."

That ugly grin spread further across Neji's grandfather's face, a smile that was assured of his victory. "And there is no specific statute in the state of Washington that forbids first cousins from marrying elsewhere and returning?"

"No…" The man replied slowly, scanning his laptop screen. "I don't see anything specifically banning it."

"Then there we have it! The marriage can simply be held in California, and then you can return to Seattle." The expression on the Elder's face was so smug, Neji thought it might burst.

He decided he might like to see that.

"There's no specific statute banning the practice of first cousins performing evasive marriage and returning, but the 1910 Washington court case of Johnson vs. Johnson set the precedent to proclaim void all first cousin marriages with the primary domicile in Washington if they had married elsewhere to avoid the law against cousin marriage." Neji had to hide the corners of his lips lifting when he saw his grandfather's face fall. Damn, he hadn't anticipated how _good_ this would feel. "'A marriage between relations within the prohibited degrees is void, its continuance is repugnant to good morals and public policy, and it will be annulled at the instance of either party, notwithstanding the applicant entered into it knowingly and wilfully.' 26 Cyc. 907."

Murmurs abounded around the room at that, mainly consisting of: "He memorized that?" "That's amazing!" "If he was using that mind to benefit us instead of fighting…"

The Elder looked so taken aback, he was unable to speak, and Neji felt a surge of triumph at being able to strike him speechless. Then his face cleared and he snapped once again to the man behind the laptop.

"Look it up! Faster!"

Jumping and swallowing nervously, the man shook at the sound of the Elder's command but quickly set to his job. This time, it only took about thirty seconds before he looked up to confirm Neji's words again. "He's right. Case No. 8185, Department Two, January 22, 1910. Appellant, Nannie N. Johnson, respondent, Amel Johnson. Married in Victoria, B.C. to circumvent the law. Court ruled they needed to divorce."

The Elder ground his teeth in obvious frustration before his eyes lit up again. "Common law marriage."

"Washington doesn't recognize common law marriages," Neji quickly countered. "And common law marriages are only recognized when the couple fulfills all requirements for legal marriage anyway; that is, that none of the statutes declaring marriages void are broken, including the statute against marriages between less than two degrees of kinship."

The ugly expression returned to Neji's grandfather's face. "You know we have absolute control over your assignment, don't you? This whole conversation becomes laughably moot when you realize we could easily relocate both you and Hinata to a state where you could legally marry."

A rumble of tumultuous emotions ran their course through Neji's chest, soon solidifying into nervous determination; he had one last argument, one last shot in the dark, but the chances were likely that if he used it, he would lower himself into a position where he was worse off than he was before. Still, if he backed down now, they would win, and he'd never be able to fight them on equal footing again. He had no real choice.

Taking a deep breath and looking his grandfather in the eye, Neji said quietly, "But would you move me to a place where you could not fully utilize the talents you praised not a few minutes ago? Or risk having me somewhere where you couldn't keep an eye on me?"

Unlike his previous statements which had been met with murmurs and the rustling of a hundred bodies shifting to whisper their own thoughts to their neighbors, this time frozen silence descended over the room after Neji's well-worded declaration of war, more complete and still then even when the Elder had commanded it. After a few beats of shocked reticence where nothing moved, not even the air in the lungs of the room's occupants, the Elder slowly stood, the sound of his chair scraping back on the rough tile like the knell of an executioner's blade being sharpened. Neji swallowed thickly, though his mouth was too dry to wet his throat much; he'd probably just fucked up in just about the worst way possible.

"Was that a threat, Neji _Hyuuga_?" He enunciated very clearly, putting special emphasis on Neji's last name as if to remind him where he was and who was around him.

"Not at all," Neji quickly stated, "but I know how you think. I've never actively gone against you or any member of this family, but I've stood up to you. I've spoken out and held firm in my opinions. People like that… you tend to keep them under closer surveillance, don't you? That might be difficult to do from a state that would allow a marriage between Hinata and I, like, for example, Alaska."

This time, the council of elders stirred at Neji's words, but still made no sound. His grandfather's face transformed from anger to a cold facade of stone so devoid of emotion, Neji was sure he wouldn't be able to tell what was going on behind the mask even if he'd used his Byakugan to read the colors of his emotions. Then the Elder stepped out from behind his desk and started to descend the steps from his high perch down to the floor of the room where Neji stood.

Elders never took to the floor when their council was in session, especially not one with as high a position as Neji's grandfather. The elders around the edges of the room broke into indecipherable mutters, but Neji was frozen in place by the strong, stony gaze of his grandfather slowly approaching him.

 _Well, you fucked this one up pretty good,_ the irate voice in the back of Neji's head chimed in, having finally cut the ties binding him and dragged himself up out of the deep pit Neji had banished him in earlier, but Neji didn't even react to his presence; he was frozen, his leaden limbs refusing to heed his frantic instructions to turn and flee in the face of those powerful, gorgon-like eyes.

The Elder only stopped when Neji was within arms reach, tilting his head to the side as if deciding on the best way to skin him to cause the maximum amount of pain before he died of blood loss. Without a word, he reached out and grasped Neji's chin, forcing him to look up into his face. Neji was on the taller side of average, but his grandfather towered over him, both in height and in bearing.

"Byakugan!" He snarled, his face morphing into a terrible expression as his grip on Neji's chin tightened, his fingers pressing hard enough that Neji was sure they would leave a bruise. His eyes flared white, searing themselves into Neji's vision as the heat of his gaze intensified and swept through Neji's body, down to the most intimate parts of his emotions.

"Let me make this very clear," the Elder growled, the anger in his voice letting Neji know exactly how far over the line he'd stepped. "You are not part of this council. You do not get to assume what we do or how we should do it. In fact, you do not get to make any sort of conjectures on what we do. Your job is to simply obey our commands, and you've proven here today that you cannot even do that- and directly after a display of mercy from us, no less!"

"I-" Neji started, but his grandfather cut him him off with a vicious backhand, knocking him off-balance and sending him stumbling to the ground.

"Silence!" He roared, his dead eyes locked onto Neji's as he looked up at his grandfather from the cold ground, the chill seeping up into the bones of his leaden limbs. "You do not get to speak- you have not the right to! This is our council, and we make the rules! All your posturing and talk of laws means nothing to us!"

This time, Neji wisely chose to keep his mouth shut, averting his eyes from his grandfather's seething face. The skin of his cheek pulled in an unnatural way at the motion, causing a twinge of pain that he winced at, which in turn only made the pain worse. He reached up to touch the sore spot to find it was damp, and when his fingers came away, he saw they were colored red with his own blood.

 _The ring,_ he realized dimly, the inside of his head still ringing from the force of the blow. _His ring… across my face…_

Apparently this wasn't good enough for the Elder either, because before Neji knew what was happening, he felt a fist in the hair at the top of his head drag his face upwards, forcing him to look into his grandfather's furious face once more.

"I do not think you fully understand the situation you are in right now," he spat, the words falling around Neji like shards of broken glass. "The Hyuuga family is not bound by the law- we are our own laws. Our duties do not fall under the jurisdiction of any government agency or facility, therefore we operate outside the law. If we need something that can't be bought in a legal store, we get it. If we want two people to marry, we marry them whether or not the _State of Washington_ thinks it ethical. And if someone becomes a problem…" His hand tightened in Neji's hair, his fingernails scraping painfully against his scalp. "We eliminate them. No questions asked. Do you understand now?"

Oh, yes. Neji understood, all too well. He had just thrown away his best shot at getting himself out of the mess he was in all because he'd counted on the misconception that the elders were law-abiding citizens of their state and country, something so predictably wrong it was almost laughable. He'd lost the battle, maybe even the war, and there wasn't anything he could do about it. Because _Ab Ordine Libertas_. From order comes freedom. But not his freedom.

But what he said was, "Yes, Grandfather."

The Elder gave a sharp tug on Neji's hair, causing him to hiss in pain. "You've lost the right to address me so casually. Use my title."

His title… Neji's face burned in humiliation, but he forced his lips to form the words. "Y-yes, Lord… Lord Hyuuga."

"Good." The Elder dropped his fistful of hair and turned his back on Neji as he crumpled to the floor, wiping his hand on his pants and releasing his Byakugan as he made his way back to his seat.

Neji heard rather than saw him go, his head lowered in submission and defeat so his forehead rested against the cool tile of the floor. He'd gambled a little too much, flown a little too close to the sun, and his wings had melted away, leaving him to tumble into an unsympathetic and cold ocean. Hot tears of anger prickled at the backs of his eyes, but Neji forced himself to hold them inside. He'd already suffered enough humiliation today; he wouldn't lower himself even further.

"Are you still down there?" The cruel voice echoed out again. "Get up, Neji. Don't disgrace yourself any further."

Neji obeyed the voice without thought, raising his head to look at the figure of his grandfather, seated back behind his desk. _What is it about this man that scares me so much?_ He wondered as he pushed himself to his knees, and then unsteadily to his feet. _He's old, and physically weak- I barely felt that blow, and the only reason my face hurts now is because of his ring. Why, then, do I feel so helpless facing his eyes?_

At the moment, he didn't look terrifying to Neji; in fact, he didn't even look angry. His eyes were filled with mild disappointment, but little else. No trace of the monster who had stared Neji down with eyes rabid enough to turn the bravest hero to stone remained. He looked almost harmless sitting in his high-backed chair with his hand steepled, like a normal doting grandfather.

Except that illusion had been shattered when he had stalked over to Neji and ground his pride into the dirt.

"You're bleeding," the Elder said, a trace of concern in his voice.

Neji wasn't sure if it was manufactured or authentic, or which one would be worse. "It's fine," he answered robotically. "Doesn't hurt."

"I see." A trace of pride flashed through his eyes, but it was gone before even Neji's perceptive eyes could pick it up. "Well, I think that concludes our meeting. Unless anyone else had anything to discuss?"

Silence greeted his question, the other elders in the room obviously still as shocked as Neji was. It was then that Neji understood why he was so afraid of his grandfather: it wasn't because he was terrifying, but because he wasn't. While sitting behind his desk, he looked like he couldn't do anything, like his bark was worse than his bite. It made him easy to underestimate, a mistake made all too often - and one Neji had fallen right into, even with all his planning - until he stood up, that is, and revealed his true power: not physical prowess, but the title of Lord Hyuuga, youngest clan leader in a long line of leaders of the most powerful family on the Western Continent, and the authority that came with it.

After a few seconds had gone by and no one had spoken up, the Elder clasped his hand together. "I guess we are done here, then. Neji, you may show yourself out."

The sudden dismissal made Neji's head reel more than it already was. He, again, wasn't going to be punished for his actions, despite the severity of his newest crime? Was he really that untouchable?

Not wanting to push his luck any further than he already had that day, Neji turned on his heel and stalked from the center of the room, trying to disguise the anger clenching his hand into a fist. He must have been unsuccessful, however, because just before he reached the double doors, the voice of his grandfather rang through the hall again.

"Wait one moment."

Neji closed his eyes to steel himself for a half second, then turned back around to meet his grandfather's gaze once more. "Yes, Lord Hyuuga?"

The Elder waved away the formal words. "Please. You don't have to be so formal."

 _So this is how it was going to be._ "Yes, Grandfather?"

"I just wanted to let you know," he said almost conversationally, his light tone of voice belayed by the hardness in his eyes. "We've been considering moving up the schedule of your betrothal with Hinata. As you know, the original plan was to tell her of the betrothal after her eighteenth birthday, give you two a few years to court and get used to the idea, then hold the marriage. Because of that little stunt you just pulled, I've decided to move the timeline forward. Hinata will be informed of your betrothal within the month, and the marriage will be held the day she turns eighteen, giving you a little over a year and a half for courtship."

Neji had to avert his eyes; if he didn't, his grandfather might see the murder hiding therein. So not only had he blown his only shot at fixing this, he had also moved his sentence even closer. And not only his sentence, but Hinata's as well. His hands curled into fists, then relaxed in defeat. When he looked up to meet his grandfather's gaze once more, his eyes were dead and soulless. "Yes, Grandfather. I understand."

"Excellent. You may go now."

Neji turned to leave, only to have the same voice draw him up short again. "Oh, sorry, I almost forgot. One more thing."

Dead eyes swung back to listlessly meet the Elder's. "Yes, Grandfather?"

"That mark on your neck…" he mused, the words finally bringing Neji's eyes back to life, infusing them with panic, as he instinctively slapped a hand over the fading purple mark Shikamaru had left on his skin. "Yes, that's the one," the Elder continued with a chuckle. "You didn't think I wouldn't notice it, did you?"

Neji's mouth dropped open but no reply came out, so his grandfather waved it away. "Nevermind. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that you aren't to get too attached to her."

"...Her?"

"Yes, the one who made that mark," the Elder clarified. "You won't be allowed to see anyone else after you and Hinata start your courtship, so you should distance yourself now. Let her down easy… or drop her like a rock, if that will get the point across better."

"Distance myself…?" Neji couldn't believe what he was hearing. "That's it? You mean… you're not angry at me?"

A peal of hearty laughter rang through the room from the foremost chair, followed by a string of more restrained chuckles from the other elders. "Angry at you? For having a girlfriend?" Neji's grandfather asked, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. "Of course not, my boy! This is the twenty-first century; times have changed, and we can no longer enforce archaic policies on our youngest generation. So, no, we are not angry. A causal relationship is nothing to be ashamed of, nor anything for us to ban. Just as long as you recognize where your duties lie."

 _Your duties…_ The words made Neji feel sick to his stomach. Still he managed to bow stiffly as he answered. "Understood."

"Excellent. You may go now. And actually get to leave this time; I promise that was the last of it."

"Yes, Grandfather."

Not sure if he could stomach being in the same room as the council for much longer, Neji turned swiftly on his heel and walked as quickly as he could toward the door without running. The doorman gave him a sympathetic look as he pushed the doors open for him to exit, but Neji ignored him. He had no need of the pity of lesser Hyuuga. Not when he had people he still had to protect.

Someone was waiting in a chair on the other side of the door, a young man nervously tapping his foot and fiddling with his watch. As the the doors boomed shut behind Neji, he jumped up and approached him with wide-blown pupils.

"How are they today? Feeling generous, I hope?"

 _Does this look like the face of triumph to you?_ Spat the cynical voice in the back of his brain, but Neji just ignored it, too tired to even give it a response.

"Don't push your luck too hard," was all he said before walking away, leaving the nervous man to stare after him in a mixture of sympathy and terror.

Neji's footsteps echoed in the empty hallway like knells from a bell tolling out the few remaining seconds of his life before a death sentence was carried out. His shoulders drooped, his hands dangled listlessly at his sides, and his eyes were downcast. His gaze focused on the floor a half step in front of his own feet, which was probably why he didn't notice the couple waiting for him until he was almost on top of them.

"You're the man from earlier, aren't you?"

The words forced him to a halt and drew his gaze upwards to see a blond man and a woman with delicate Hyuuga features waiting for him. It took his frazzled brain a few seconds to recognize them, but once he got a good look, he saw that they were the couple who had gotten the good news ahead of him.

The woman held a hand out to him. "We wanted to thank you for earlier. My name is Mai, and this my boyf-" She cut herself off, then gave a sly look at the man next to her before correcting herself. "My _fiance_ , Alex."

"Neji." Neji grasped the proffered hand, finding that was the only word he could say.

"Thank you so much for what you did earlier," the blond man gushed, clasping his arm. "It was our first time being called in for a meeting, so we had no idea of the protocol. If you hadn't told us, we might have been where we shouldn't have been, and then…" He trailed off, obviously not wanting to finish the thought.

"The important thing," the woman insisted, "is that you helped us, and we wanted to offer you our thanks."

"Thank you," Neji managed woodenly.

The smile started to slip from the woman's face. "Are you… are you alright? Are we intruding? You didn't…" She gasped, pulling her hand from his to cover her mouth. "Oh my God, you got a bad answer, didn't you? I'm so sorry; we didn't think-"

"It's alright." Neji forced his lips to form some semblance of a happy expression. "We can't all… we can't all have everything go exactly right for us, can we?"

"What happened?" The blond man asked quietly.

A wry smile pulled at the corners of Neji's mouth. "I… also received their blessing on my marriage."

The two exchanged a glance. "Isn't that… a happy thing?" The woman asked. "Shouldn't we be congratulating you?"

"Happy…" Neji had to laugh, as hoarse as it was- his body knew no other natural response. "It should be… should be happy…"

The first tear that rolled down Neji's face caught him by surprise, dripping off his chin onto the cuff of his jacket. Still too stunned to even comprehend the emotions hidden behind a wall of fog in his brain, he reached up to find his cheek damp, a second tear trickling from behind his unaffected mask to join the first.

 _I'm… I'm crying?_

As if the simple acknowledgment of the act was enough to unfurl his moment of weakness, Neji's eyes began to spill over with reckless abandon, scalding tears pouring down his cheeks and tracing burning trails as they went. His hand covered his mouth, pressing against his trembling and parted lips and blocking any unwanted noise from escaping his throat. _It… it's over_ , he realized, the sudden clarity hitting him like a bolt of concentrated electricity. _I lost… after all this time, and still can't do the right thing. I'll never be able to protect her, no matter how hard I try._

"Um… Are you okay?"

The blond man and the woman were giving Neji pitying looks, and he suddenly, irrationally hated them for it. He spun away, one hand pressing against the wall for balance, to hide his face as more tears dripped off his chin and splashed against the floor. No one should see him like this, least of all strangers.

"I… I'm…" _Fine._

But the word wouldn't come. Instead, the hand resting flat against the wall curled into a fist as his other hand moved up from his mouth to the top of his head, where it grabbed a fistfull of hair as if it could tug it free from his scalp. As his breathing turned ragged, Neji felt a hand - delicate and slight; the woman's, most likely - gently touch his shoulder.

"I… I'm sorry for… what you're going through. Is there… is there anything we can do to he-?"

Neji stiffened at the contact, and before the woman could finish her question he stuck out blindly at her- not enough to hurt, just enough to push her away. His forehead fell forward to embrace the cool surface of the wall, his eyes squeezing shut so he could no longer see. A wave of irrational rage swept through him from his head to his toes; he needed to smash something, to main and hurt and kill! The urge flooded his senses before he could control it, and before he knew what he was doing, Neji reared back to strike the wall with all the force that resided in his untrained arms.

The blow never landed. Nothing stopped it, no one grabbed him, but a fraction of a second away from the moment where his fist would have made contact with the hard, unforgiving surface, his arm slowed until it halted a hair's breadth away from the wall. Letting a tremulous breath escape his mouth, Neji allowed his hand to bump gently against the wall, causing neither him nor his intended target any damage. The will to fight drained out of him from his palm to the wall, like the dissipation of the energy in a system over the vast surroundings of a universe.

He stayed like that for a good minute, slowing his breathing down to halt the flow of tears from his eyes. They eventually hesitated in their incessant rush long enough for Neji to push himself away from the wall, wipe his eyes, and turn back to the people who had witnessed his humiliating loss of control. The blond man had his arm curled protectively around the woman, and both were regarding him with pity and more than a little fear.

 _It's because I cried. A Hyuuga never cries. Not in public, at least._ Neji let his gaze flick around the hallway, gauging how public his display of weakness had truly been. There was no one besides the couple before him in the hallway, but around the next bend he could hear several voices, any of which could turn the corner and see him at any second. _I have to get out of here. Before anyone else sees me like this._

Inclining his head so he doesn't have to meet the couple's eyes, Neji said, "I apologize for my abhorable behavior. You'll likely never see me again, so please, don't let it trouble you." He hesitated for a second, then added, "Congratulations on your engagement."

Then he swept past them without a backwards glance, the ends of his unbound hair fluttering in his wake like the hem of a cloak. Neither one of them called out to him as he turned the corner and exited into the next hallway over, though he did hear them murmur something to each other, the only phrase of which he caught was, "…sorry for him."

Neji gritted his teeth as he sped up, power-walking down the slightly busier hallway in the hopes that no one would stop him. He didn't need their pity, dammit! He was a successful adult Hyuuga man with a job he was good at and a clear future! He had both what he needed and what he wanted from life, and was better bred than both of them combined- especially that blond, half-breed looking man. They could not even come close to Neji's station - in any other situation, they would not have even been able to approach him, let alone chat so casually - and they were headed for a life spent fighting against the whole Hyuuga family for the slightest crumb of respect, based on their current decisions, their marriage and the accidental baby just starting to grow in the woman's stomach. What did they have that he didn't have? Nothing!

Nothing except the ability to marry for love.

The thought brought Neji to a full stop in the middle of the hallway, disrupting the flow of traffic and causing several irate people to throw glares his way, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He wasn't jealous of them; couldn't be jealous of them! The Hyuuga family was a fairly large one, and the elders ran it like a clan, arranging marriages between different sides of the family to best preserve the bloodline, a practice they saw as necessary to best protect the power of the Byakugan from dwindling. They seldom allowed young members of the more elite families to choose their own partners, and almost never allowed a marriage outside of the family. It wasn't all to different from the way aristocratic families were run in medieval Europe, a once completely acceptable family law now challenged by modern standards.

Still, Neji hadn't minded the old-fashioned rules when he was younger and had grown up expecting an appropriate marriage to be chosen for him when he reached the right age, even a little grateful that he wouldn't have to worry about finding a suitable partner himself. Those thoughts had been dashed, however, when he had learned the name of his intended and seen the betrothal agreement both of them had unwittingly signed as children. He'd known then that, for him, there was to be no peaceful marriage to a wife he would care for dutifully, but without passion, set in a future carefully mapped out by people smarter than him for the betterment of his clan.

He couldn't allow the life they'd planned for him, for Hinata's sake. He loved his little sister too much to follow the orders with blind obedience. But in a closed society like theirs, disobedience was sometimes impossible, no matter how hard someone fought against the system. Neji had just proven that.

At the threat of tears starting to well up in his eyes again, Neji put his head down and started walking through the hallways at a faster clip than before, desperation giving his steps extra speed to escape the jaws of the Hyuuga battlefield before another opponent appeared to challenge him in single combat. He kept his eyes pasted securely to the floor and made it to the front antechamber without anyone stopping him. As he pointed himself in the direction of the exit and hurried toward it, his foot came down directly on the gold letters melded into the marble floor: _Ab Ordine Libertas._ From order comes freedom.

The words left an ashen taste in Neji's mouth, like the floor itself was mocking him for his failures.

He burst into a run, startling the few other people in the antechamber, and headed straight for the door, making his escape while he still could. It was darker outside than it had been when he and Hinata had made the journey to the compound earlier in the morning, though a brief glance at his watch told Neji it was only ten forty-seven. A quick look at the sky confirmed his suspicion: rain clouds were gathering, and in his haste to leave the Hyuuga compound, he'd forgotten to go back to the coatroom and retrieve his rain jacket and umbrella.

Well, he wasn't about to go back for them now. He would just have to call Hinata and ask her to bring them over tomorrow when she came for her les-

Hinata.

Damn it, everything looped back to her! Could Neji think of nothing that didn't remind him of his failure that afternoon, a failure that had fucked up both the rest of his life and the life of person who held the most value to him, the person who trusted him to protect her the most? The person he'd willingly called a little sister for the past ten years?

The first drop hit Neji squarely in the eye as he looked up at the gathering rain clouds, which was quickly followed by another, than another, then a deluge of water raining down from the sky. Neji simply stood there and let the rain fall on his face, too drained to produce any other action and finding himself uncaring as to whether his suit remained dry. The rain trickled down his head, weaving through his thick hair, like it was washing away the stains of his failure from his mind.

Neji knew the rain was cold, but somehow, he couldn't feel it. He reached a hand upwards, as if to grasp something far beyond his reach, before his arm sagged like the limb of a puppet whose strings had been cut and swung back down to his side.

Without a clear destination in mind, only knowing he couldn't go back to his apartment yet, Neji started walking again, hunching his shoulders against the trickle of water that seeped through his jacket and flowed down his spine. Perhaps a little walk in the rain would serve to clear his thoughts, give him a fresh perspective on things. At the very least, the damp might drive his mind from its current state of numb acceptance.

* * *

Moegi could hardly contain her laughter as she walked down the street under her umbrella, her eyes glued to her phone. After Hinata had texted her, Udon, and Konohamaru all back - short, polite messages that suited her personality perfectly - to tell them she had programmed their numbers into her phone, they had convinced her to join a group text with them. She had been nervous at first at the prospect, but they'd managed to convince her in the end, and Moegi was extremely grateful that they had. She was just so adorable and innocent that everything she said was innately funny, especially since she was obviously new at texting and didn't know what many of the abbreviations for things meant.

As Moegi was watching Udon explain to Hinata the subtle distinctions between the usages of "LOL", "LMAO" and "ROFL", she caught sight of a young man sitting on bench in the rain, his face buried in his hands and his clothes soaked completely through. The sight wasn't uncommon - after all, some people simply could not go through a personal crisis without making a big deal out of it and sulking in the rain in an altogether too cinematic fashion - but something about this particular young man drew her eye. Maybe it was his expensive-looking suit, obviously quite a fine garment - at least before the rain had gotten to it - or maybe it was his long hair, loose, waterlogged and dragging down well below his shoulders, or perhaps it was- holy shit, was that Neji?!

Moegi almost dropped her phone and umbrella in shock. Neji did not go through personal crises, and even if he did have one, he was not the type to figure it out by sitting out in the rain, ruining his expensive suit and likely setting himself up to catch a cold. Still, though she hadn't recognized him at first because his hair was out and wet, instead of back like he normally wore it, his stature and bearing, while currently slumped, were unmistakable.

Just to make absolutely sure, however, Moegi took a few steps toward the young man who was perhaps Neji and called out uncertainly, "Neji? Is that you?"

The young man jerked his head upright at the sound of his name as if someone had just dropped an ice cube down the back of his suit, giving Moegi a good look at his face. It was obviously Neji, and from the panic in his eyes and the frantic shake of his head back and forth, trying to pinpoint the source of the voice that called out to him, he had both not recognized her voice and not wanted anyone to see him like this. Taking pity on him, Moegi stepped closer, and as soon as Neji's eyes lighted in her, he relaxed. Interesting. So it wasn't her he was afraid of finding him. But that only beget the question, who was it he was afraid of?

"Moegi?" He asked, surprise clearly written on his face and in his voice. "What are… what are you doing here?"

Stepping close enough that she could tilt her umbrella over Neji's head and block any further rainfall, Moegi studied his face. It was hard to tell with the damp tracks of raindrops on his cheeks, but she thought that he had been crying. "I could ask you the same thing! My God, Neji, it's raining buckets out here! Where is your umbrella? Or at least your raincoat?"

Neji averted his eyes, and Moegi's instantly narrowed; he hadn't even spoken yet, and she could already tell that he was hiding something. "I… forgot them. Besides, I was having a nice walk in the rain."

"In a suit?" Moegi shot back, and Neji looked down at himself as if surprised to discover the clothes he had on and were ruining by exposure to the rain. "I'm not stupid enough to fall for that, Neji. I know you. Now, tell me what's bothering you before I have to break out the threats."

"There's nothing bothering me," Neji sighed, standing up next to Moegi and shoving his hands into soaked pants pockets. "I'm fine, Moegi. I just needed to clear my head."

"And that, in and of itself, is a huge problem for someone like you." Moegi seized Neji's arm in a vice grip, keeping him from pulling out from under the umbrella. "Come on, let's get you somewhere nice and warm so you won't catch your death of cold, and then you can tell Big Sister Moegi about all your troubles."

Neji gave her a withering look as he tried, and failed, to escape her grasp. "Being chilly is not going to give me a cold. Bacteria cause colds, not being out in the rain. And you aren't my big sister."

But Moegi ignored his glare and started dragging him down the street, despite his complaints. "And being cold lowers the ability your body's immune system to perform its job, thus making you more susceptible to bacterial infections like colds. I think. Regardless, let's get you warmed up. Hypothermia _is_ something you can catch from being out too long in the cold and damp. And everyone needs a big sister once in a while to rub their back when they cry."

They ended up in a nearby cafe, the kind of small operation that kicked itself for not being Starbucks while having opened only three blocks away from the original store and been around for five years before that uppity chain had even formed. But they weren't jealous, oh, no, they were fine staying as the small store they had always been. It was less work than managing a million stupid stores that all sold the same thing, and all the locals knew they had better coffee anyways. And cuter wait staff. And that was all that mattered.

Neji took off his jacket when they sat down, draping over the back of his chair where it sat and dripped, creating a puddle that a nearby waitress regarded with a mixture of disgust and resignation. Moegi had to shake her head at the sight of his high-collared shirt, as completely soaked at his jacket had been, and wondered how long he had been standing in the rain to allow for than much water to have been absorbed by his person.

When she asked as much, Neji just shrugged, asking in turn what time it was.

"Close to twelve forty," she replied with narrowed eyes.

"Then almost two hours."

"Two hours?!" Moegi was agast. "Sweet Jesus, you're lucky you haven't started shaking yet! Two coffees, please," she directed at the waitress who had been previously casting harsh glances at the puddle forming beneath Neji's chair.

Whipping into professional mode, the waitress flashed them a blinding smile and flipped her notebook open, pencil at the ready. "Cream and sugar? And can I interest you in one of our fresh baked goods?"

"We're good with just the coffees, thanks," Moegi answered for them both. "And I'll have three sugars, and he'll have two sugars and-"

"Actually," Neji interrupted, "I'd like it black, please."

Moegi had to check to make sure her mouth wasn't hanging open after Neji cut her off. "Neji, you hate black coffee."

"I know." He flashed her a wan smile, then turned back to the waitress. "Black, please."

"Alright then." Through clearly surprised by the exchange, the waitress refused to allow her professionalism suffer, and she closed her little notebook with a snap. "Your coffee will be out in a few minutes."

Moegi watched Neji's eyes trace the path taken by the waitress as she left their table, his shoulders slouching from the squared set he had forced them into when they'd entered the cafe to a slump the further away she got. When she disappeared behind the counter, he let his head fall into his hands, his damp hair sliding forward in uneven clumps to hide his face from her view. Biting her lip, Moegi reached forward and laid a hand on one of Neji's shoulders. He stiffened under her touch, and she felt that he was trembling, but she didn't think it was from cold.

"Okay, Neji, now you're scaring me. What's wrong? Did something happen?"

A hoarse chuckle floated up to answer her question, the sound muffled by his hands. With a frown, Moegi squeezed his shoulder harder.

"Neji, you know I care about you. You're one of my best friends, and I know for a fact that I'm one of your only friends. I'll listen to whatever you have to say without judgement. If you can't open up to me, who else could you talk to?"

Again, no answer was forthcoming, even when Moegi waited for almost fifteen full seconds, and she was about to try one more time when she felt his shoulder spasm under her touch and heard the muffled sound of a choked sob.

Instantly, she was out of her seat and on the other side of the table, tearing Neji's hands away from his face. He turned away as soon as he knew what she was up to, but it was too late and she had already seen his tear-stained face and red eyes. For a second, Moegi was frozen, unsure what to do; she'd never seen Neji, easily the most confidant person she'd ever met, looking so broken. Then his hand came up to cover his mouth as hunched over, the sound of his sobs like the breaking of a heart, and she unfroze, wrapping him in a warm hug.

The embrace was a little awkward, since Neji was sitting in his chair and Moegi was standing, but she made it work, throwing her arms about his shoulders and burying his face in her torso. He stiffened at the contact at first, but after a few moments he sank into into her embrace, shifting his arms to wrap around her waist and crying into her shirtfront. Gently rubbing circles on his upper back with the heel of her palm, Moegi pressed her face into the top of his damp hair and whispered to him of everything and nothing at once, knowing it was her voice and not her words that mattered. The few other patrons of the little coffee shop gave them strange looks, but she sent glares at them that made them drop their gazes, silently glad that this was one of those cafes that saw most of their business in the morning hours, and that it was almost deserted now.

Eventually, Neji's tears dried themselves up, and he pushed himself away from Moegi with a shaky breath. She allowed the distance between them, but still kept hold of Neji's shoulders as he tried to smile in her direction, but really only succeeded in forcing a grimace.

"S-sorry. You shouldn't have to see me being so w-weak."

Good Lord, he was even stuttering like his cousin. Tucking a stray clump of damp hair behind his ear and tutting gently, Moegi gave him a warm, genuine smile. "That's what I'm here for. You ready to talk about it now?"

Neji's face closed off again at the words, hesitation clear on his features. Knowing that forcing him would do more harm than good, Moegi settled in to wait, resolved to hear him let out whatever was bothering him before she let him go.

"Um, excuse me?"

Immediately forgetting her promise, Moegi dropped her hold on Neji's shoulders and sprang away, as if she'd been caught doing something naughty. Of course, then her face flamed because now the waitress, who'd returned with the two cups of coffee they'd ordered would think they _had_ been doing something naughty.

True to her prediction, the waitress's cheeks darkened to a hue matching Moegi's own, and she held the two cups of coffee aloft, as if needing their assurance to explain her presence. "Your c-coffee?"

"Ah, y-yes," she stuttered, quickly retaking her seat, happy to see a trace of amusement cross Neji's features, even considering what had caused it. "Thank you."

Gathering the shreds of her professionality around herself, the waitress set the cups of coffee down in front of the pair. "Three sugars for the lady, and black for the gentleman. Are sure there isn't anything else I can get for you?"

"No, we're fine," Moegi managed through her embarrassment, and the waitress nodded before turning and leaving to check in on an older man at a nearby table.

Again, Neji's eyes traced her path as she left, but this time he just looked down into the depths of his coffee when she was out of hearing. "Are you going to tell me what _that_ was about?"

"Oh, come on, she was looking at us weird!" Moegi hissed, picking up her cup of coffee to hide her distress. "You saw it! She's probably thinking something weird right now, like we're dating and I brought you here to dump you or something!"

Neji's gaze darkened. "Or something," he agreed, picking up his own cup of coffee and taking a sip. His face instantly transformed into a grimace when the liquid hit his tongue, and it he looked like he wanted to spit it instead of swallowing. "That is absolutely revolting."

"I warned you," Moegi said sternly, raising her own cup to her lips and taking a sip. The warm liquid sent rays of heat throughout her body from her stomach, chasing away the chill that had permeated her limbs from the rain. Across the table, Neji took another sip, pushing the liquid down his throat with a look of revulsion, but Moegi noticed that his hands were no longer shaking and he looked warmer.

"So, now that you're feeling better, are you ready to tell me what that was all about?"

Neji gave a gentle snort into his cup of coffee. "What makes you think I'm feeling better?"

"Absence of tears, and you managed to complain about the coffee." Settling her cup back down in its saucer, Moegi steepled her hands and fixed Neji with an immovable stare. "I know you're a private person, Neji, and there's a lot of things about your family you don't feel comfortable discussing in front of us, but just bottling everything up won't solve this problem."

"That's assuming there is a problem," Neji scowled into his cup of black coffee like it had personally offended him, swirling the dark liquid in its container.

"Don't play dumb with me, Neji. I have never seen you as bad off as you are right now. So you either buck up and tell me, or I'll be forced to break out the blackmail material."

Neji took another swig of his black coffee, grimacing less this time. "Like you have anything on me."

"Oh, really?" Moegi reached into her purse and retrieved her phone, waving it in his face. "Don't you remember the incident with that class we all took together a few years ago? The dance class?"

The cup of coffee crashed back down into its saucer, and Neji's face drained of all color. "I thought you deleted that! I told you to delete it!"

"Like I would ever delete something like that," Moegi scoffed. "It's practically the only thing we have on you! And besides, it's funny. Sometimes I watch it when I need a laugh."

"F-funny?" Neji spluttered. "That was the single most humiliating experience of my life!"

"Yeah, funny," Moegi agreed amicably. "And by the way, Udon and Konohamaru have a copy of it as well, so even if I deleted it, it would still exist. So good luck making it disappear, because there's no way we're _ever_ letting that one go."

Letting out a groan of defeat, Neji dropped his head into his hands once more. This time, however, Moegi was sure he wasn't crying, and after a few seconds, muffle words floated out to reach her ears.

"You know that I don't like to talk about my family. They're secretive. I could get in trouble for much more than this."

"Then give me a hypothetical," Moegi suggested. "Like, if they ordered you to assassinate the President of the United States, you could just say they'd called a hit on someone."

When Neji pulled his head out of his hands, the glare he gave Moegi could only be described as withering. "We are _not_ a family of assassins."

She shrugged in response. "I didn't way you were- though you are secretive enough to be one. I said hypotheticals, didn't I?"

"Hmph." Neji grunted, then grabbed his coffee and took another gulp, this time with minimal wincing at the flavor. After that, he kept the cup close to his face swirling the dark liquid like it held the answers to the universe. Moegi also retrieved her cup and took another sip, savoring the sweet bitterness and the steam rising up into her face, content to let him work out exactly how much he wanted to tell her.

Almost two minutes later, Neji finally sat his cup back down and fixed his gaze on Moegi. "Okay. Okay, I'll tell you. But you can't tell anyone else."

"I thought that would go without saying," Moegi said quietly.

But even that wasn't enough for Neji, who reached out and grabbed her wrist. "Promise me, Moegi. Promise that you won't tell a soul what I'm about to tell you. Even-" He broke off with a difficult swallow, then forged ahead again. " _Especially_ Hinata. She can't know anything that gets said here today. Can you promise me that?"

Even Hinata? _Especially_ Hinata? This was something so bad, he couldn't even discuss it with a member of his own family, the girl he completely doted on? Carefully keeping her gaze locked with Neji's, Moegi set her cup of coffee down and grabbed his hand with both of her own.

"I promise, Neji. No one will ever hear a word from me."

"Good." He nodded shakily several times to himself, then let his head tilt forward again, his long hair hiding his expression from her eyes. Moegi didn't move, just waited for him to make the decision to speak, and after a few seconds he sighed and leaned back, tucking his hair behind his ears, but he still refused to meet her eyes.

"You know how Konohamaru always makes jokes about my hair and how long it is, and how that must mean that I'm… that I'm…" He muttered almost under his breath, trailing off at the end as if unable to say the word that logically ended that sentence.

The breath caught in Moegi's throat, and she covered her mouth with a hand as she fought off her elation. "Neji, are you telling me…?"

"I… kissed someone recently," he admitted, a hint of a blush staining his cheekbones. One hand crept up to his collar, where it hid the tell-tale mark Moegi had already noticed that let her know he'd done a little bit more than kiss someone. "It was a man," he added in a rush, as if getting the words out faster would lessen their impact. His blush intensified, and he flicked his eyes upwards to gauge her reaction.

Moegi had to admit, this was not the conversation she thought she was about to have with Neji, and she was so happy that it was the case. With the way he'd been crying, she'd thought that maybe someone close to him had recently died, or his family had forced him to sign up for the army despite being a conscious objector or something. This was so, so much easier, and she couldn't help the punch-drunk smile that spread across her face.

"Neji, that's fantastic! I'm so happy for you!" She gushed, leading dangerously quickly over the table to grab his hands in both of hers, which he let her do in surprise. "Tell me all about him! What's his name? Is he cute? From around here? How old is he? Does he-"

"Hold up, one at a time!" Neji held his hands up to stop the deluge of questions, which didn't work well because her hands were attached to them. Then he paused, confusion etched on his features. "Wait, that's all you have to say?"

"Your sexuality has been a running joke for years, Neji. We were all honestly waiting for this."

"Oh." He looked so mournful that Moegi couldn't resist trying to cheer him up.

"On the bright side, Udon now owes me and Konohamaru a hundred dollars. Each."

Shock etched itself on Neji's features. "You took bets on my sexuality?!"

"Yes, but that's not the important part." Moegi waved the concern away, then leaned in closer and lowered her voice. "You have to tell me all about him! I need deets, man!"

"What the hell are 'deets'?"

"You know, details!" Grinning, Moegi raised one eyebrow suggestively. "Let's start with the most important one: when do I get to meet him?"

All the life that had been reinstated in Neji's face over the course of the conversation drained away again, and he dropped his gaze into his cup of coffee. "You don't."

Moegi blinked. "P-pardon?"

"You can't… meet him," Neji clarified, avoiding her gaze.

"Ever?"

"Ever."

"Well, why not?!" Moegi exclaimed loudly enough to draw the attention of several nearby patrons. After smiling tightly at them until they looked away, she lowered her voice, she hissing, "Why not? Why can't I meet him?"

Raising his cup, Neji took a long draught of the coffee, then stared at the dregs that remained, swirling them pensively as if they held the right words for him to say. "His situation is… unique."

"Define 'unique'," Moegi ground out through gritted teeth. "Dammit Neji, I need gossip!"

A small smile pulled up one of the corners of Neji's mouth. "You need gossip like you need another head." Then the smile dropped away as the lost, broken expression returned to his face. "Unique means he doesn't have contact with many people. And can't make any exceptions to that rule, even for you."

"Doesn't have contact with people?" Moegi's nose wrinkled up. "What does that mean? What, is he an invalid? On bedrest in a hospital somewhere? In _jail_?" Her eyes widened. "You don't have him locked in your basement, do you?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Neji scoffed, some of the bleakness fading from his expression. "My apartment doesn't have a basement."

"That's exactly what a kidnapper would say!" She hissed right back. "Did you lock him in a closet, then? Counting on Stockholm's syndrome to assure his affection for you?"

"I did not-! Okay, I'm ending this discussion right now. There is no reasoning with you when you're like this."

"Poo." Moegi pulled her best puppy dog eyes, but Neji glared right back and refused to budge, so she sighed and picked up her coffee cup again. "But I don't understand, Neji. You're not the kind of person to be thrown off by something like that. I mean, it's you didn't overtly chase women before, so it's not like you're losing a part of yourself. There's got to be some other part to this. Please, Neji, tell me what's happening to you."

Neji sighed again, tilting his head forward so his hair slid forward and hid his face. "I already told you I can't say much more than I already have-"

"Then give me a hypothetical!" She interrupted, dropping her coffee cup and reaching across the table to grab Neji's hands. He jumped at the sudden contact, lifting his head to bear his tired gaze and jostling his coffee so some of it spilled over the side of the cup and onto the saucer, a few drops making their way to the tabletop. "Is your family overtly homophobic? Are you afraid to tell them the truth about yourself? Afraid that they'll reject you? The confident man I know wouldn't be bothered by such things."

"Not… exactly." Neji looked away, fixing his gaze on the dark spill across the tabletop instead. "My family is not… homophobic in the usual sense of the word. That is, they won't take drastic measures - like disowning me completely - if I tell them… tell them I may be actively pursuing a relationship with… another man. They just…" He trailed off, and Moegi squeezed his hands tighter.

"They just what, Neji?"

"They don't support relationships they haven't condoned," he burst out, though Moegi noticed his voice was quiet enough that it wouldn't carry beyond their table. "And few make that cut, considering that to them, relationships must serve a purpose- mainly, furthering the next generation of the clan." His tone was thick, as if sickened by the very words he uttered.

Moegi's eyes widened. "You mean…?"

"Arranged marriages? Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about." His hands trembled in hers. "And once they make a decision, they don't go back on it lightly. No matter how hard you fight them, or for how long… no matter how many _years_ you've put into protesting their unjust rulings or how many arguments - valid, logical points! - you make, they're always there, ready to thrust my face back into the dirt the moment I make any headway!"

Moegi noticed when Neji's pronouns changed over from general to specific, but she didn't call attention to it- mostly because she was too shocked to speak at all. An arranged marriage, in this day and age? Neji wasn't kidding when he said his family was old-fashioned! Then something in his word choice caught her attention. While speaking thus far during the conversation, Neji had always spoken of the unknown people who held such unfathomable sway over him as his family, but when he'd spoken of the arranged marriage, he'd said "furthering the next generation of the clan". Not his family, but his _clan_. A strange word for such a modern setting. It brought to mind the far distant past before there were concrete nations and borders, when groups of nomads, a few loose families with intermingling bloodlines, would band together to travel. Their entire lives would take place within the confines of their clan, including…

Including marriage.

The air in the room felt suddenly too thick for Moegi to breathe. Was this what Neji was facing? Had she accidentally guessed the secret he had been hoping to keep, the thing he couldn't say out loud for fear of punishment?

"Neji…" She said quietly, her voice trembling slightly. "When you say your family arranges marriages to assure the next generation, does that mean they arrange them… within the family?"

Silence fell between them, hot and oppressive, seeming to block out all the other noises of the cafe, the low rumble of their neighbors, the tinkle of cups being set back down into saucers and the drip of percolating coffee. Neji didn't answer Moegi's question in words, but he didn't need to; all the color drained from his face, leaving it an ashen shade of grey, his hand on the table shook so badly that it rattled his coffee cup, and all motion from his lungs ceased, telling her that her assumption had been correct.

Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. "Neji…" She whispered, reaching out for him, but he brushed her off and stood up, his face still ashen.

"I… I have to go now," he muttered, his hands trembling as he tried to grab his jacket. They were shaking so badly that he almost dropped the sodden thing twice before he was able to get it up off the back of the chair. "I shouldn't have said anything… anything at all… I can't… can't-"

"Neji!" Moegi jumped up as well, catching his wrist as he tried to flee. "Don't you dare leave like this! If something like that is really happening, you have to tell someone-"

"Nothing like that is happening!" Neji shouted, drawing the attention of the entire cafe, which grew silent at his raised voice, the occupants turning their respective head to look at him in a mixture of surprise, annoyance and disapproval. "There is nothing going on! You're wrong! Completely wrong!"

"Neji-!"

"You have no right to ask me those kinds of questions! No right, you inquisitive bitch!"

"THE FUCK, NEJI! HOW DARE YOU CALL ME THAT!?"

"HOW DARE YOU QUESTION ME?"

"I'M YOUR _FRIEND_ , NEJI- I'M TRYING TO HELP YOU!"

"WELL, I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP! LEAVE ME ALONE!"

"Excuse me, sir…?" The waitress who had served them was back, her features pinched with worry. "You're disturbing our other customers. If you could please calm down-"

"Calm down? _Calm down?!_ Oh, I'll _calm down_ alright!" Neji screamed out his maniacal laughter, swiping his arm across the table. The motion upset the cup that had formerly held his coffee and now held only the last cooling dregs, sending it crashing to the floor in a mess of shattered china and dark liquid. "Take your fucking coffee and your fucking _calm down_ and throw them to the dogs where they belong!"

"Neji!" Moegi reached out before she could think her actions through and slapped Neji across the face.

Hard.

His head snapped to the side from the force of the impact, and when he looked back at Moegi, a red mark in the shape of her hand was blossoming on his cheek. He looked angry and in pain, but the wild gleam in his eye had faded. Slowly, the life drained from his face again, taking with it the facade of anger that had obscured his features before and leaving nothing behind but the broken countenance of a boy much younger than he really was.

His mouth flopped open for a moment as if he was going to offer some resistance, then Neji turned away and slid his sleeves into his jacket. The soaked fabric make the job harder than it would normally be, but he struggled through the difficulty, buttoning up his suit coat and tucking his tie down into it. He ended with a careful adjustment of his collar before turning back so Moegi could see his face. It was changed, cold and distantly professional, like she'd never seen it before, and suddenly it reminded her, more than anything else that had been said or done in the conversation thus far, that Neji lived in an entirely different world from her.

His hard mask still in place, Neji inclined his head in the direction of the waitress. "I do apologize for the commotion I have caused you. I normally do not lose my temper so easily, but I have been… under duress as of late." He reached into his pants pocket to draw out a wallet, then retrieved a few crisp, though slightly soggy, bills and handed them to her. "For the coffee for the lady and myself. Keep the change."

"But this is too much-" the waitress tried to protest, but Neji held up a hand to quiet her with a tight smile.

"For the cup. I do not usually make a habit of breaking things that are not mine, and I'd prefer not to leave here indebted."

"Neji-" Moegi started, but Neji cut her off as well.

Taking a deep breath, he said, "I apologize for my actions here today, Moegi. I was rude in the face of your kindness, and my cruel words were completely uncalled for. I can only hope this does not have a lasting impact on our friendship."

"Of… course not?" It was more of a question than a statement. Moegi's eyebrows furrowed in confusion; this wasn't a side of Neji she'd ever seen before and it was starting to scare her. "Neji, are you sure you're alright?"

"No," he answered with lowered eyes, almost too quiet for her to hear. "I'm not sure about anything right now." Then he gave his head a single shake as if to clear his thoughts and raised his gaze again. "Your voice has helped me to somewhat see reason, however. But even so… I think it would have been better for both of us if we hadn't come across one another today."

"But how can you say that?" Moegi gasped indignantly. "Neji, I thought were were friends!"

"We are… which is why I regret you ever had to see me like this."

"Friends are supposed to be there to celebrate the best times and help during the hard times. I'm not some fairweather confidant who'll run at the first sign of trouble, Neji."

"I know." He started towards the door, then paused just as he passed her. "But unfortunately, this isn't something you can help me with."

Then he was gone, hurrying with lengthy strides towards the door and disappearing through it. Moegi watched him make his way down the sidewalk through the large front window, his head drooped forward and his hands shoved deep in his pockets, not even trying to avoid the heavy rain.

The voice of the waitress next to her shocked her out of her thoughts. "Men in suits are always more trouble than they're worth."

"I guess you're right." Moegi watched Neji disappear around the corner of a building a block away, then turned to the waitress with a sigh. "Sorry for the trouble. I'll take the check now, please."

* * *

By the time Neji got back to his apartment, the little he'd managed to dry off and warm up had been stolen from him by the chill rain again, and an unpleasant shiver was starting to pervade his body. As soon as the door was shut behind him, he ripped off his clothes down to his sodden underwear and left them in a soggy pile on the floor barely a few steps into the apartment, then closed all the blinds, turning away what little light was able to make it through the clouds. It was dark now, the appartment thick with shadows, but Neji found himself more comfortable in the dark than he would have been if the light had been on.

The suit was likely ruined by the rain, and even if it wasn't yet, it would be if Neji didn't take care of it soon. However, he just couldn't bring himself to pick up the pile of fabric, nor did he think he could even stand to feel it against his skin again, not after what had happened today when he'd been wearing it. So, he just left it there and went into the bathroom instead, where he turned on the shower as hot as it would go and, after getting in, scoured every inch of his flesh with soap until his skin was raw and smarting, as if he could wash away the memories of the meeting, his subsequent humiliation, and the failure that would dog his footsteps for the rest of his life.

Hinata.

How could he marry her? She was more than like a sister to him; she _was_ his baby sister! How could they not understand? What could they possibly hope to gain by pairing them up? Usually, matches were made to either give strong Hyuuga who were of low status a better standing in the clan or to place unruly youngsters who were seen as threats in a place where they could be better kept track of. Both Neji and Hinata, however, were already a part of the more elite branches of the family and, as such, in a place of almost constant surveillance, so there had to be some other reason the elders were so adamant on the marriage. Particularly his grandfather. Both of their grandfather, in fact.

 _Maybe he thinks no one else will have her,_ Neji thought despondently, then his eyes widened when he realized what he'd just thought and ducked his face directly under the scalding spray. Hinata had her own set of problems, but she wasn't an invalid. She wasn't unwanted.

When the boiling water had washed away all the suds that clung to his body, Neji leaned his forehead up against the shower wall and let the spray fall on his back, his hand resting on the knob that controlled the flow. He knew he should turn it off, that he shouldn't be wasting water like this, but somehow he just couldn't bring himself to. It was like he was waiting for something, but he didn't know what it was he was waiting for.

" _Hello, Neji."_

A shiver went down Neji's spine at the memory of the words spoken in a dark voice, and though he knew he was alone and it was only his mind playing tricks on him, he thought he could feel a phantom hand trailing from his shoulder down to his backside.

" _Nice ass, by the way."_

Neji bit his lip to stop the wave of heat flowing through his body that had nothing to do with the shower and twisted the knob, slowing the water down to a trickle that dripped itself out in a few seconds. He stood there listening to the steady drip of water from the knob down to the drain for almost a minute before a shiver of real chill scuttled down his spine, propelling him out of the shower and into a warm robe after he dried off.

The empty mirror seemed to haunt Neji as he brushed out his hair in front of it, mocking him with a scene devoid of any reflections except his own, though he knew that even if his desired company was there, he wouldn't be able to see his reflection. Purposefully, he turned his back on the mirror, finished brushing his hair, and walked out of the bathroom. His experiences that afternoon had proven to him once and for all that he didn't have the time nor the freedom to mess around and play games with someone who didn't fit into his pre-planned Hyuuga life. However much he might want him to.

The pile of clothing he'd left on the floor caught his eye as he made his way back to the front part of his apartment, and Neji felt a hot flash of irritation rush beneath his skin. Before he could talk himself out of it, he grabbed the sopping wet pile and hurled the whole lot of it in the trash can. Then he couldn't stand the sight of the trash can, so he yanked the bag out, tied it up, and, after throwing on a pair of slippers, stalked out the front door of his apartment, descended the stairs, and hurled it in the dumpster.

There. He could always buy another one if the need arose. It wasn't like he was destitute.

As soon as the bag was gone, Neji felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his chest. He quickly made his way back to his apartment and shut the door behind him, locking himself once more in the semi-dark realm of shadow. There was a wet spot where he'd left his suit on the floor, and he threw the closest thing he could find - which turned out to be a dish towel - on it so it wouldn't cause water damage to the boards. It lay in a crumple heap, soaking up the dampness without any assistance. Neji started to reach down to pick it up again, but somewhere along the way he found himself on the floor as well, his back pressed up against his apartment door and his knees curled up to his chest.

His head fell forward, his forehead resting against his knees. His heart wanted to cry again, but he felt wrung out from all the crying he'd already done that day, as if he had no more tears left to give. Like a curtain, his hair fell about his face, blocking out the outside world and giving him a private place in which he could mourn- what? The loss of his future? His sister? A few of the words he'd spoken to Moegi earlier rushed through his mind.

" _My family is not… homophobic in the usual sense of the word. That is, they won't take drastic measures - like disowning me completely - if I tell them… tell them I may be actively pursuing a relationship with… another man. They just… they don't support relationships they haven't condoned."_

Why had he said any of that? Neji drew his arms tighter about his knees. He'd known all along that a permanent relationship between someone like him and someone like Shikamaru wasn't possible- even ignoring the fact that they lived on completely different planes of existence, Neji would never be able to secure the blessing of his family and Shikamaru wouldn't likely be content to watch Neji grow old and interact with the world when he himself was unable to. So why, then, did Neji feel like he'd just lost something he was just starting to treasure?

Shikamaru would have probably figured it out already. But Shikamaru wasn't there, and even if he was, he wasn't the type to explain his thoughts.

He might have stayed in that same spot, pondering those questions over and over, letting them run around the inside of his head like racehorses on an oval track in an endless race, had his phone not that moment begun to ring.

For a moment, Neji almost didn't recognize the sound. The ringtone was unfamiliar, alien eve, like a foreign entity intruding upon his thoughts, and coldly meticulous, bringing to mind images of a clerk in an office with dull metal walls and flickering fluorescent bulbs overhead. Then it rang again, more insistently, and Neji finally recognized it for what it was: the landline installed in his kitchen expressly for the purpose of urgent calls for his job, not his cell phone, which is what he normally used for communication. It had to have been months since it had last rung. A wave of dread swept through Neji as he stared at the phone attached to his wall, his mind racing through every possibility he could think of; who could be contacting him, and why? Had the elders changed their mind and decided to punish him after all?

Slowly, Neji rose from his seated position and made his way to the ringing telephone. Then, taking a deep breath in the hopes that it might steady his voice, he picked up the phone and held it close to his ear.

"Seattle File Operator Neji Hyuuga speaking."

"Ah, yes, Neji," a voice crackled through the phone. "This is Boston File Operator Iroha Hyuuga. I have a note I wish to discuss with you about the most recent monthly report I sent in."

"Of course. Just give me a minute to pull it up."

The request took Neji by surprise, but his nervousness quickly faded away. In addition to managing all the reports and sightings for the area he was in charge of - the better part of the states in the Pacific Northwest - as the File Operator in Seattle, the closest to the family headquarters, Neji also had the job of overseeing a monthly written report of the highlights of every File Operators' work. It was uncommon for a File Operator to call and give a verbal note to accompany the written report, but not unprecedented. Neji slid the phone between his jaw and his shoulder, holding it it place as he walked over to his computer, then sat down and searched for the file on his computer.

"Boston… Boston… the one you just sent me yesterday, correct?"

"Yes, that is correct," Iroha answered. "So you've read it already, then?"

"Yes, I believe I filed it already. There was a special request in it, was there not? About one of your men needing a temporary replacement because he was in an accident… Ah, here it is: Boston, Iroha Hyuuga, sent yesterday." Neji opened the file. "Yes, that's the one I was thinking of. Hoheto Hyuuga, stationed in Connecticut, currently recovering in a Boston hospital from being caught in a burning building, suffering from minor burns and severe smoke inhalation. If you're calling about that, I already put the request in, so you don't have to worry. His replacement should be out there within a few days."

"Thank you, but that's not why I'm calling. Well, it is about Hoheto, actually, but it's not about his replacement." Iroha paused for a moment, as if unsure how to continue. "He… well, Hoheto has been unconscious since the fire, and today he finally woke up."

"That must mean he's on the road to recovery, then? Isn't that good news?"

"It is, but…" Again, Iroha paused, for longer this time, and when he started speaking again, his words were clunky and unsure. "Well, when he woke up… he started… started just _rambling_ , on and on and on, and the craziest stuff. We didn't know what to make of it. Seems he's convinced someone set that fire on purpose, to get rid of him."

"To get rid of him?" Neji frowned. This was indeed bad news warranting a call; their family had been targeted before by radical groups who were convinced they were evil because of their ability to see ghosts, or they were demons for the same reason, and it was a delicate situation that always had to be dealt with swiftly and precisely to avoid the idea spreading and their privacy being compromised. "Another self-righteous conspiracy theory hate group, you think?"

"That's what I thought at first as well, but Hoheto told a different story. He was convinced it was a ghost who set the fire."

Neji froze in the act of clicking on a link on his computer, his hand clenching around his mouse with white-knuckled fervor as the image of a blond man… ghost… _thing_ with burning hands flashed through his mind's eye. It couldn't be, could it? They had escaped Konoha, but why would they resurface again so quickly, and so near to where they had last been spotted? It was complete folly; since they had recognized both Sasuke and Neji as being Uchiha and Hyuuga respectively, they had to know the prowess of both families and how they could easily take their little group down if they wanted to. So it couldn't be them. Right?

Neji's vain hopes were dashed by Iroha's next words. "And not just any ghost, either; no, he says it was a wraith. What do you make of that, huh, Neji?"

But Neji couldn't bring himself to answer; no, he couldn't even bring himself to breathe. The coincidence was too great now. It _had_ to be them, or at least the pyrokinetic one. There was always the chance that they had split up to better protect themselves. But wraiths were social creatures, unlike most other kinds of ghosts; they tended to cluster together and form groups, and when they did, they didn't often separate until they faded or were torn from this world a second time.

"…Neji? Neji! Can you hear me?"

With a start, Neji realized that Iroha had been speaking into his ear for some time while he'd been lost in thought, and he hadn't heard any of it. Clearing his throat, he deliberately forced his hand to loosen its grip on his computer mouse as he answered the increasingly concerned man on the other end of the phone line.

"Yes, I can hear you, Iroha. Sorry about that. I just… remembered something that might have something to do with this, is all."

"You did?" Relief, and then increasing worry, was evident in Iroha's tone. "You think think there's a pattern? Could this become a problem?"

"I'm not sure…" Neji's gaze roved over his computer screen, looking through a list of files for a pattern. "But it's a possibility. Did he say anything else?"

"Not much else. After I got that much out of him, he just kept screaming 'they're coming, they're coming' over and over again and wouldn't answer any of my questions. He lost consciousness again shortly after."

"You sure that's all he said?" Neji pressed. "No indication as to who the 'they' might have referred to? Anything could be important, anything at all, no matter how inconsequential it may seem."

"No, I don't think so…" Iroha started, and Neji felt mixed disappointment and relief flow through him, which was immediately quenched by his next words. "Oh, yeah, actually there was something else! It was right before he started screaming and lost consciousness again. He was trying to remember something and then he muttered a word, and that seemed to set him off."

"Do you remember what the word was?" Neji asked with equal parts eagerness and trepidation.

"It was a strange word, one I've never heard before, so I'm not sure if I remember it exactly, but I'd definitely recognize it if I heard it again. It was aka- something, maybe… akason? No, that's not right… akaski sounds a little bit better, but that's not it either… aka… aka-"

"Akatsuki?" Neji supplied, a cold hand gripping his heart. "Was it 'Akatsuki'?"

"You know," Iroha said slowly, "that actually sounds right. How did you know?"

Neji felt his jaw freeze in fear for a few seconds before he was finally able to speak again. "I'm sorry, Iroha, but I'm going to have to let you go now. I believe I just found the pattern."

"You found a pattern? What is it?! What's going on, Ne-?"

 _Click_. Neji hung up the phone before Iroha could finish getting out his name. Something about this report bothered him now that his attention had been brought to it, something that he would have probably noticed by now if his mind had been on his job and not on other things. He scanned the rest of the report until he found the part he was looking for.

Two more arson cases unsolved by the police, reported in because the circumstances were unclear enough that spectral animosities could have been involved, another one in Connecticut and one is south-western Massachusetts. Flipping to another report sent in by the File Operator for the area from New England to Ohio, Neji scrolled down until he found five more suspicious arson cases that had been reported in, two in New York, two in eastern Pennsylvania, and one in New Jersey.

They were all too close to be a coincidence. Neji jumped up from his computer and rummaged through a set of drawers until he found a map of the United States, which he brought back to his computer desk and marked down the locations of the fires. When he finished, he drew a line connecting all of them, the shape of which roughly resembled a semicircle, and would likely have been a full circle if the space the other half rested in hadn't been covered in water.

Neji swore aloud when he saw the name of the city sitting roughly in the center of the semicircle he had draw. Of course. Of course it was New York City. It was always New York City.

 _Well_ , he reasoned as he reached for his cell phone, selected a contact, and held it up to his ear to hear it ring, _at least having something to fix takes my mind off things and I won't be moping around here._

"Neji?" The voice on the other end of the phone sounded surprised when he picked up. "What's up? Is there a problem?"

"Unfortunately, Sasuke, there is. We may have fucked up big time, and now we need to clean it up before someone else puts any of it together. How soon can you be in New York City?"


	17. The Respect Owed a Leader

It has... been a bit. But this chapter is a bit longer, so I hope that makes up for it.

Thank you so much for your praise, Falainakorna! I'm so glad you thought it was intense enough to read twice- that means I'm doing my job right! I hope you enjoy this chapter too!

And don't worry, SoraROCK, I'm sure Neji will manage to get out of the engagement- one way or another!

* * *

"I wish you could tell me if my tie was on straight or not."

Itachi snorted unsympathetically, swinging his feet as they dangled off the edge of Kisame's bed, where he was perched as the other dressed for his first time appearing as the gang's leader in front of all its members. "You have a mirror, Kisame. You can tell if your own tie is on straight."

"Yeah, but it feels more... I don't know, official? Professional? Intimate? - when someone else does it."

"Alright then, have it your way." Itachi slipped off the bed and padded towards Kisame, guided to his position by the sound of his voice earlier, touching his shoulder when he reached the bigger man. Using his sense of touch as a guide, he slid his hand along Kisame's shoulder until it reached his collarbone and his tie, which he gently tugged a little flatter. "Better?"

"You just made it more crooked."

"See if I care, then!" Itachi threw his hands up into the air and turned his back on Kisame with an irritated _harumph._

He wasn't able to get very far, however, because before he could take more than a few steps, Kisame grabbed his arm and reeled him back. "And where do you think you're going?"

"To finish getting myself dressed," Itachi responded irately. "I do take slower than the average person, you know."

"You're already good with what you've got on."

"Excuse me?" Itachi's eyebrows crawled up his forehead, though they were hidden by the bandana wrapped around his empty eye sockets. "This is the first time you're appearing in your formal capacity as the Boss of this gang, Kisame, and you've selected _me_ above everyone else there to be your right hand man! I can't come out wearing just a pair of black dress pants and a white shirt!"

"I know you can't," Kisame said in a soothing voice, holding on to Itachi to prevent his escape with one hand while the other pulled a garment from his closet. "I have something for you here."

"What is it?" Itachi asked with curiosity, but Kisame just spun him around so he was facing the mirror he couldn't see and his back was to Kisame's chest.

"Just hold out your arms."

Still curious but wanting to be obedient, Itachi bit his tongue and held out his arms, waiting patiently for the slide of material across his skin. When it came, it was heavier than he expected, and when the garment was fully on, he shrugged both shoulders to feel the weight of the fabric that was pulling downwards on his shoulders.

"Is this… a suit jacket?"

"And that's not all," Kisame declared, giving his shoulder a pat. "Turn back around."

Obediently, Itachi did as he was told, and as soon as he faced Kisame again, he felt the bigger man's hands encircle his neck. For a moment, uncertainty shot through him - what _was_ he doing? - but that soon melted away when Kisame's hands drew back, leaving the sensation of a slim piece of fabric sliding around his neck over his collared shirt.

A tie?

His question was answered when Kisame flipped up his collar and adjusted the ring of cloth around his neck, his big hands fumbling at his collarbone to knot the material in an acceptable manner. Definitely a tie. When Kisame dubbed it good enough, he turned Itachi around again so they were both facing the mirror and gave a contented sound at what Itachi guessed was their reflections.

"There."

"Kisame, are we… matching?"

"Do you mind?"

"Not at all!" The corner of Itachi's lip twitched up. "Besides, most suits look alike anyway."

"So they do." Kisame let out a low chuckle, then rested his hand on Itachi's shoulder. "Here, let me do one more thing."

"What?"

But Kisame didn't stop to explain, just swiftly reached up to Itachi's face and tore away the bandana that was covering up his empty eye sockets. When the air, so much colder than the skin-heated cloth had been, hit the scar tissue, Itachi tensed up and hissed, trying to hide his face in his hands, but was unsuccessfull as Kisame stopped him by grabbing both of his wrists with one hand.

"Stop squirming, Itachi; it will be over soon, and the harder you struggle, the more time it will take."

With great personal effort, Itachi stilled himself with a calming breath, but irritation still washed off him in waves. "You could have at least warned me. You know I don't like them being uncovered, and least of all unexpectedly."

"If I had, you would have avoided me."

"...Fair point. Just get what you wanted to do over with."

Itachi heard the sound of the fabric of the bandana settling to the top of the nearby dresser, then a clatter as something harder was removed in its stead. For a split second, Itachi wondered what it was, then his question was answered as he he felt the teeth of a comb against his scalp.

"I already brushed my hair this morning, Kisame."

"Yes, but I can do it better." The comb worked its way through Itachi's hair, destroying the part he had carefully constructed that morning and pulling his hair back into a kind of wave. "There. Now you look like a gangster."

Itachi heaved a sigh, though he was internally pleased. "Is this really necessary?"

"It's always necessary to look the part. Isn't that what you told me?"

"I suppose so," Itachi mused as Kisame carefully tied the bandana back over his empty eye sockets, smoothing his hair down so it wouldn't get caught in the knot. "It's getting a bit long, though, isn't it? They wouldn't cut it at the hospital because- well, you know. Sharp things and the like. Do you think I should get it cut shorter?"

"I like it the way it is," Kisame declared, dropping his arms around Itachi's shoulders and hugging him to his chest.

"Mm-hmm." The corners of Itachi's mouth curled up. "I feel like I look like a badass."

"You do look like a badass," Kisame assured him. "All you need is muscles like mine and you'll be the perfect stereotypical mobster."

"As if. What would I be able to accomplish with muscles?"

"Intimidation." The answer was immediate, no hesitation, and Itachi gave a mock pout, which he knew Kisame would be able to see in the mirror.

"Am I not intimidating enough for you already?"

With a hearty chuckle, Kisame pulled away from Itachi completely as he rummaged in a drawer for something. "Not next to me, you aren't. You look like a toothpick."

"Well, it's not like I can help that!" Itachi snapped, then paused when he heard the click of metal against metal. "What is that?"

Silence hung thickly in the air for a few seconds before Kisame cleared his throat. "I have one more thing I'd like you to have today. I don't know if you'd like it, though."

"Like it? Whyever wouldn't I like it?" Itachi frowned, then stuck out his hand. "Just give it here."

For a few moments more, Kisame hesitated, then he placed the thing he was holding into Itachi's waiting palm. He couldn't tell what it was when his fingers first curled over it, but he knew it was metal and solid. When he brought his other hand to it, however, his fingers easily recognized the shape and he drew in a shocked breath.

"Kisame… I can't use this."

"I know, I know, I thought you'd say that," Kisame sighed. "But everyone else out there will be 'packing heat', so to speak, even I will, and they won't respect you if you don't as well. They'll think you're soft and-"

"No, no, that's not it," Itachi quickly interjected before Kisame could try to convince him further. "I'm not objecting to carrying a gun for moral reasons. I just can't shoot one. Because… because I'm blind."

"Oh!" That drew Kisame up short, and Itachi could practically see the frown on his face as he thought. "I mean, you're not going to be using it for anything. It's mostly just for show. Letting someone else know you're also carrying a firearm is often enough to make them back down from a confrontation they otherwise wouldn't think twice about. And if you absolutely needed to… couldn't you like… aim by sound or something?"

"Not if you wanted any degree of accuracy," Itachi rebuked. "I'd be liable to shoot an ally by accident instead of the one I was really aiming for."

"Then you won't have to shoot it," Kisame declared. "Just carry it. It might make them think twice about underestimating you."

Itachi curled his hand more comfortably around the grip of the gun. "I thought that was the goal, though."

"To underestimate you enough to ignore you, not enough to believe your presence is worthless. We want you to be able to hover in the background without much attention, not have people actively crying for your dismissal."

"Makes sense." Itachi held aside one side of his jacket. "Is there a holster for this thing?"

In the moment between his question and Kisame's answer, Itachi could almost see the pleased smile spreading across Kisame's face, then he cleared his throat and bent back to the dresser drawer. "Yes there is."

When he stood back up, he took the gun from Itachi's hands and replaced it with the holster, which felt like it was made from either a reinforced leather or some kind of faux material. A long line of the same material drooped from either side of his hand, which Itachi recognized as a belt.

"This one's a belt holster," Kisame explained in answer to Itachi's unasked question. "I chose it for two reasons: one, because it's easy for the bottom of it to peek out from under your suit jacket if you want it to, and two, because this gun is a little heavy for the one extra side-arm holster that I have. Do you want to do it yourself or do you want me to do it?"

"You'd probably better do it. I've never put on a holster before," Itachi admitted, raising his hands over his head to pull his jacket up enough to reveal the belt loops at the waist of his pants. "Though I have shot one once or twice. Sometimes we would get issued guns fitted with silver bullets when we were going up against troublesome ghosts. They were unsafe, though, so they never let us keep them and we never had them when we really needed them." He gave a bitter laugh as Kisame started to feed the belt of the holster through the loops on his pants. "As my presence here makes that painfully obvious."

"Well," Kisame said as he latched the belt at the front of Itachi's waist, "perhaps it's selfish of me, but I can't help being grateful for that. Because if it weren't the case, there's no guarantee that you'd be standing here with me today."

Itachi's jaw tightened and he snapped, "You're right. It is selfish." Then his tone softened and he allowed one hand to drop down and rest on top of Kisame's. "But I'm starting to feel that way myself."

"I'm glad." Kisame caught Itachi's hand in his own and laced their fingers together for a quiet moment, then sighed and pulled away. "Alright, here's the gun. The safety's on right now, so it's not liable to go off, but there's always a chance it might."

"It's not going to go off and shoot me in the foot if I jostle it, is it?" Itachi asked dubiously.

"Nah, you gotta pull the trigger for that. Or have a really bad gun, but this one's been maintained recently. You should be fine."

"That's reassuring," he muttered under his breath as Kisame handed him the gun and guided him to place it in the holster, making the bigger man laugh.

"If this gun is the worst of your worries for this meeting, I don't think you'll have much of a problem."

Itachi pulled his jacket down to cover the tell-tale bulge of the holster and patted the concealed gun to ascertain its shape and definition underneath the layer of fabric. "We'll see about that."

"I think you'll be surprised." Kisame turned back to the mirror and adjusted his tie one last time, the sound of his fingers tugging on the fabric rustling through Itachi's ears, then he sighed again. "Well, here we go. Miru should be here any minute now."

"Why did she agree to act as our liaison, again?" Itachi asked as he leaned against the dresser, listening to Kisame give his suit a final brush-down. "I thought she didn't trust us."

"She doesn't," Kisame answered, "but I think you made a good impression on her the other night."

"Well, thank God for that," he muttered. "In between my vomiting and screaming at her, I suppose."

A heavy hand fell on Itachi's shoulder. "You don't have to be so jaded about it," Kisame admonished.

"I'm not- I'm just surprised she could ever respect me now."

"It's not your strengths that are admirable, Itachi, but your ability to overcome your weaknesses."

"Wow, _that_ was a backhanded compliment."

"You know what I meant."

Their bantering was cut short by a respectful, yet demanding knock at the door. "That'll be Miru," Kisame said, striding towards the door with Itachi following close after.

The first thing Miru said when she opened up the door was, "Your tie is crooked."

"See, I told you someone else needs to do it for you!" Kisame complained, then suddenly choked as, assumedly, Miru decided to fix the tie herself. "Wait…! Not… that… tight! Can't… breathe!"

"You're lucky that's just a tie and not a noose," Itachi chuckled, only to find himself yanked forward by his tie as well a second later and the same tie-straightening procedure done on him.

"Both of you are hopeless," Miru sighed as Itachi spluttered incoherently and Kisame laughed at him. "I'm surprised you managed to put your pants on the right way."

"Well, Itachi did have a little trouble-"

"Can it, Kisame!" Itachi interrupted through gritted teeth, which only made Kisame laugh harder.

"I guess I'll just have to leave that one up to your imagination."

The sound of hair rustling against cloth told Itachi that Miru was shaking her head in disbelief. "How are you two so close? You haven't known each other for much longer than a few months, right?"

Kisame was quiet at that, but Itachi laid a hand on his arm and answered for both of them. "Sometimes, it's not the amount of time you spend with someone, but what you do with them that draws you together."

There was a smile in Kisame's voice as he laid his hand on top of Itachi's. "I couldn't have said it better."

"I can't decide whether you two are stupid or amazing."

Itachi dropped his head forward to hide his tight smile. "I hope that leans more towards amazing one day."

"As do I," Miru whispered under her breath too quietly for Kisame to hear, but not so for Itachi's precise ears. Then she shook her head again and said more loudly, "We should get going. They're waiting for you."

"Yes, of course." Kisame's hand fit snugly into the small of Itachi's back, prepared to guide him along the way.

They traversed the twisted hallways quickly, Miru's footsteps tapping ahead of them at an impressive tempo. By now, Itachi was familiar enough with the general layout that he could recognize their destination: the hall with the long table that had housed their first meeting with Miru, Raiga and Fuguki. As they drew near it, Itachi suddenly felt a bubbling of nervousness in his stomach, and he grabbed Kisame's sleeve.

"You remember what we talked about? What you need to say? Our signals?"

"Yes, Itachi, I do," Kisame murmured in his ear, giving him a reassuring pat on the back. "We went over it ten times or more. We can do this."

"Yes, we can do it," Itachi repeated, but it was more to himself than an affirmation of Kisame's earlier words.

That was all they had time to say, however, because Miru stopped then and announced, "We're here."

Taking a step in front of Itachi, Kisame took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "I'm ready."

Inclining her head with a rustle of moving hair one last time, Miru pushed open the door and announced their presence to the crowd gathered within.

"Our new Boss Kisame and his advisor, Itachi."

 _Advisor._ Itachi found he rather liked the sound of that.

The sound of around thirty chairs scraping backwards as their owners stood respectfully echoed through the open door as Kisame entered, with Itachi following close behind and slightly to his right. When they were through the door, Miru closed it behind them, and Kisame nodded to the assembled men and women.

"Thank you all for agreeing to this meeting today. Please, be seated."

The chairs scraped against the floor again as everyone reseated themselves, and Kisame continued on toward the table until he jerked to a halt so suddenly that Itachi almost ran into him.

"Fuguki," he growled with a not of warning in his voice. "I thought I said there was to be an extra chair placed at the head of the table? Specifically, to my right?"

"Oh, you mean for your blind little guard-dog?" The smirk was clearly evident in Fuguki's voice, which emanated from a spot at the head of the table that should have been occupied by Itachi. "Don't worry; I took the liberty of placing a chair for him further down the table, with the rest of the newer recruits. I could even lead him there for you, if you like."

The gritting of Kisame's teeth was audible from where Itachi stood. "That will not be necessary, Fuguki. In fact, this wouldn't even be an issue if you had done as I requested in the first place."

Alarm bells started ringing in Itachi's head, and he placed a hand on Kisame's sleeve, one of their predetermined signals not to speak again until Itachi removed it. He hadn't anticipated that Fuguki would start his power play so early, but now that the game had begun, neither of them could afford to make a single mistake, especially not in front of the whole gang. He would have to diffuse this situation before the meeting started, and quickly.

"Forgive me for my mistake, _Boss_ ," Fuguki said with even more smugness in his voice, especially on the heavily accented title. "It's just that we are not used to such… _demanding_ leadership. Shall I send for another chair? Or have everyone on one side of the table all move down a chair to make room for your little pet?"

A few titters and chuckles broke out from around the room, and Itachi could feel Kisame's muscles tense in anger under his hand, though he didn't respond to Fuguki's bait, as Itachi's signal dictated. So there were quite a few people here that supported Fuguki in his power play. In that case, Itachi would have to be careful not to insult him too much while asserting Kisame's dominance over him. Taking a step past Kisame, Itachi turned his head in Fuguki's direction and fixed him with a passive smile.

"You must have been without a definitive leader for some time if the request for a single extra chair seems demanding to you."

Silence descended over the room as everyone held their breath, waiting for Fuguki's response, but it appeared that he was too flabbergasted by Itachi's comment to even formulate one. On Kisame's other side, a short, muffled short of amusement rang out into the silence, breaking whatever spell of quiet had been cast over the room.

"He's got you there, Fugu," Miru said with amusement from her own seat at the table. "And it was your fault for not getting the right amount of chairs. Just give him yours and go get another one."

Itachi offered up a silent thanks to Miru before shaking his head. "It would be rude of me to displace you like that, Fuguki- though I would like to sit up here with the rest of you. Perhaps that chair you mentioned setting out for me further down the table could be moved?"

He let his hand slip off Kisame's sleeve, ending his bout of silence, and he cleared his throat before nodding in Fuguki's direction.

"If you would, Fuguki."

A full two seconds ticked away before Fuguki moved, standing up with unwanted fervor and throwing his chair back at least half a foot. "Yes, Boss," he said with a rather sullen air, then turned to look down the length of the table and barked at someone at the other end.

"Jinpachi! Chair! Now!"

The man he had called to jumped from his chair with a start, stuttering his consent as he rushed to drag the chair up to the front of the table, letting the back legs scrape against the floor as he went as if deliberately marking his passage and letting both Itachi and Kisame know every second of time he spent on the task was a second he reviled. When the chair was slammed down in front of him, Itachi murmured a quiet thank you to him, but he only snorted and started loudly back to his seat.

Kisame reached over in front of Itachi after the man had left and angled the chair to fit next to his own - on his right side, between himself and Fuguki, though he had to shift his own chair to the left slightly, closer to Miru, to make room for it. With a soft inclination of his head in thanks, Itachi slipped into his chair and pulled it in close enough to the table that he could rest his hands on it, hearing Kisame at his side do the same. As he pulled his chair forward, he made sure to 'accidentally' brush the side of his suit jacket back for a moment, exposing to Fuguki's gaze the holstered pistol at his side. The sound of Fuguki's teeth grinding in irritation was audible to Itachi's keen ears, and he had to hide the smile it caused. An angry Fuguki would be more belligerent, but less crafty and thus easier to deal with. And besides, it felt good to know he had the upper hand- if only for a short moment.

"It appears we're all here; are we ready to start the meeting now?" Kisame asked, and on Itachi's other side, Fuguki coughed almost in disbelief.

"We've all been waiting for you."

The accusation was audible in his tone, but Kisame didn't let it phase him. "As I recall, my Father used to make everyone wait when he called meetings like these, sometimes for only a few minutes and sometimes for almost an hour, to keep them on their toes. Perhaps that's a tradition I should continue."

"Perhaps," Fuguki replied through gritted teeth.

"Which brings me to the reason why I called this meeting." Kisame paused for a moment, likely to sweep his gaze around the table. "I see familiar faces here, as well as those I don't recognize. For those of you who don't know me or don't remember who I am, I used to belong to this group many years ago. My Father… was the Boss before me, and now that he has… passed, I've returned to take his place."

"You _used_ to belong?" An unidentifiable voice from halfway down the table asked. "So you left?"

Several disapproving hisses echoed from around the table, and Itachi could physically feel the ambient temperature of the room chill a few degrees.

"Well, Jinin- it is Jinin, isn't it?" After a pause in which the person who had spoken before grumbled an affirmation, Kisame continued, and Itachi logged the voice in his memory under the name Jinin. "Yes, I did leave this group. I wanted to tell you all that in person so we could start with a clean slate, no secrets and no lies. I was born into this group, and it meant the world to me because it _was_ my whole world. I left, not because I chose to abandon everyone here, but because I fought with my father and decided I could no longer follow him."

The air in the room fluctuated in strange patterns, growing softer in some places and harder in others. Itachi carefully pulled his hands from the table and placed them in his lap, feeling Kisame's gaze flit over to him and quickly take in the sight of one of their predetermined signals: _speed it up._ The truth was good to get out in the open, but this crowd wouldn't appreciate a sob story.

Clearing his throat slightly, Kisame continued, "At the time I left, I'm told, my father was sure I would return someday. I was sure I would not, but… It appears I was proven wrong. I'm back now, and I don't plan on leaving again."

That was good. Short, sweet, and to the point, if a little heavy. Itachi moved his hands back onto the table, scratching the back of his left one to make the movement seem more natural.

"So, in short," Kisame continued in a lighter tone, "I'm here to take over the position my late father left vacant, and I thought I'd like to make all of your acquaintances before I made any decisions."

"Make our _acquaintances_?" Another voice from down the table echoed incredulously. "Excuse my language, _Kisame_ , but where the fuck do you think we are? The fuckin' Royal Opera or some shit?" That drew a laugh from several of his compatriots, but he talked over them, his belligerent words piling up higher and higher until they eclipsed everyone else at the table. "Do you know where we are? In the fuckin' slums, the dregs of this city, and you talk like you been educated, taught to looks down on the fuckin' _petty criminals_ like us! You ain't one of us no more, Kisame; even the way you talk proves it! How can you expect us to follow you if you can't even speak our language? Our _real_ Boss would never do that!"

In the face of the accusation, Kisame remained silent for a moment, his head bowed down toward the table. "In case you haven't noticed, Mangetsu, I am not my father."

"Oh, believe me, we noticed."

Shocked silence overtook the whole room as everyone held their breath at Mangetsu's daring accusation. Kisame remained motionless for a few moments, then slowly stood again, the sound of his chair scraping backwards against the floor thunderous in the silence. "Speak your language?" He said quietly, standing and removing his jacket in a steady and menacing fashion before folding it over the back of his chair, then unbuckling what Itachi assumed was his side holster and hanging that over the back of his chair as well. "It's been a while since I've had to, but the words don't easily leave you once you learn them." He beckoned Mangetsu forward. "Come here."

After a brief, almost unnoticeable hesitation, Mangetsu sneered at Kisame and threw his chair back so hard, it tipped over and hit the ground, then stalked up to where Kisame was waiting for him. "You gone soft. You ain't got it no more, I'll bet."

"How much are you willing to place on that bet?" Kisame asked steadily, and Mangetsu laughed.

"You ain't gonna wanna put money on that bet, you little shit. It ain't gonna be worth it."

"How about… your loyalty instead, then?"

"My… loyalty?" Mangetsu appeared flummoxed for a second, then his brain caught up to the meaning behind the words and he laughed again. "Yeah, sure, you reject. You can have my loyalty if you beat me- just don't count on it too hard."

"If you say." The hidden amusement in Kisame's voice was plain to Itachi, though likely not to anyone else in the room- except, perhaps, the more perceptive Miru. "I'll even let you have the punch; how does that sound?"

"Your loss! There ain't no room for manners here!" Mangetsu spat, launching himself at Kisame without warning.

It only took a few seconds of the sounds of flurried impacts that Itachi wished he could see before Mangetsu was on the ground, groaning, and Kisame stood over him, cracking his knuckles.

"Whew, that wasn't much of a workout at all! You disappoint me, Mangetsu. I thought you'd give me a little more trouble than that!"

The room seemed frozen at the sight, at least until Kisame let out a hearty laugh.

"Man, it has been a while since I've done something like that! Really gets the blood pumping, doesn't it? Well, are there any other takers?"

Perhaps an invitation for a mass brawl wasn't the way Itachi would have done it, but he could admit that he was inexperienced in these types of situations and Kisame knew what he was doing, so he was content to sit back and listen to the event as it unfurled, trying to hide the amusement in his smile.

For a few shocked seconds, no one even moved, then a man halfway down the table jumped up with a cry and sprinted towards Kisame, only to be knocked down to the floor within a single blow.

"Come on!" Kisame jeered, nudging his downed foe none-too-gently with the tip of his boot. "Is that the best you've got?"

That was all it took; a split second later, half the table was on their feet, rushing towards Kisame, and the majority of those who remained were only behind the first wave because shock had dulled their reaction time by a few seconds. Even Raiga, who was sitting on the opposite side of Miru, joined the fight with an excited yell after a few seconds, leaving only Itachi, Miru and Fuguki sitting on opposite sides of him, and two more people he didn't know sitting further down the table.

"It is often like this around here?" He asked conversationally as a body flew over their heads and landed in the middle of the table.

"Sometimes it's worse," Miru whispered like it was a secret, leaning closer to Itachi in a confidential manner. "One time, Raiga started a fight with a few of our drug runners and they were at it for _hours_."

"What over?"

"He has a special friend, a little boy named Ranmaru that he treats almost as his younger brother, who runs for us. He was caught and beat up pretty badly, and he's been in the hospital for a while. Raiga blamed the other runners for not protecting him."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I hope he recovers soon."

"We all do. He's the only one who can calm Raiga down when he gets really going." There was a bitter trace in Miru's voice, and Itachi mentally made a note in his _Miru and Raiga_ file: " _thing" is no longer current. Jealously? Bad breakup?_

By the time this conversation had ended, Kisame had chewed his way through at least three-quarters of his attackers and spit them out on the floor in crumpled heaps- though not critically damaged ones. Apparently he wasn't having any trouble at all with his mass of attackers, because he had time to throw a cheeky quip their way.

"Are you sure none of the rest of you want in on this? Miru? Fuguki? Itachi? It's amazingly cathartic!"

"I'll pass, thanks," Itachi replied sarcastically, and Miru shuddered in response.

"Fistfights aren't my style. I'm more of a gun person, myself."

"Suit yourself!" Kisame cheerfully turned back to the last few of the mob still standing, punching one so hard he flew backwards and smacked into Itachi's chair with a loud groan.

Of those still standing, one of them was one of the few women in the gang besides Miru, and she taunted Kisame, "You wouldn't hit a woman, now would you?"

To which Kisame cheerfully replied, "I will if she hits me first!" and punched her in the face.

Amusement twitched up the corners of Itachi's mouth as he listened to the exchange and Miru's subsequent call of "Nice try, Ameyuri!" - which was his excuse to why he didn't notice that Fuguki hadn't responded to Kisame's call, nor his subtle movements under the table until he heard the snick of something metal sliding out of its casing.

It took a second for the sound to register in Itachi's brain, then another for him to recognize what it was, during which Fuguki stood up and started towards the man in the center of mess of downed bodies, who, judging by the sound of his voice bouncing off the far wall, was facing away from them.

Itachi didn't have time to think before his body moved, launching itself out of the chair and taking Fuguki to the ground with him, the switchblade he had pulled - the sound Itachi had identified earlier - skittering across the ground until it came to rest not far from where Kisame was standing. The brawl instantly stopped, though Itachi wasn't sure if it was a reaction to the knife or the fact that he had just body-slammed one of their most prominent members to the floor.

"Get off me, you little- mph!"

Fuguki struggled to get up, but Itachi shifted his weight to make it impossible, sitting almost upright on his upper back and pressing his face against the floor to prevent him from rising. He even thought about drawing his gun and pressing it to the back of his captive's head, but decided that would be going a little too far. The goal for this meeting was for Kisame to demonstrate his dominance over the other members of the gang, not drive them away.

The few remaining members of the mass brawl still standing backed away as Kisame took a step towards the knife on the ground and picked it up, turning it over in his hand and considering it as he walked toward the man Itachi had pinned. Tapping it to the side of his nose, he squatted down next to Fuguki, then brought it close to his face.

"Is this yours?" He asked in a deadly quiet voice, and Itachi lessened the pressure keeping his face pressed to the floor so he could speak.

"Yes, it's mine! So what if it is?" He spat defiantly, his voice strangely thick, as if there was blood in his mouth. Itachi frowned a little; had he broken the man's nose? Whoops. He'd have to fix that one later.

In that same deadly quiet, Kisame continued, "And was this going to end up inside my back?"

This time there was a brief hesitation before Fuguki spoke again. "No."

"Liar!" Kisame reared back with one booted foot to kick Fuguki in the face, but Itachi stopped the blow with his hand before it connected. The force of the blow made him wince; Kisame's boots were heavy.

"Why did you stop me?!" Kisame roared, though the words were more restrained than his earlier accusation.

"Because he's telling the truth." That stopped Kisame, and he squatted back down in surprise.

"Explain."

"He opened the knife at the table, in full sight of Miru and at least a dozen other people," Itachi said, his grip tightening on Fuguki's shoulder. "If he really wanted to stab you, he would have waited until he was much closer to open the knife, so fewer people would see it and he would have a smaller chance of being stopped. No, you weren't his target: _I_ was. He was testing me, trying to prove that I was incapable of performing the job he jeered at me for having- how did you say it? The _blind guard dog?_ "

There was a moment of silence as Kisame absorbed the information, then he grabbed Fuguki's chin himself, forcing him to look him in the face.

"Is this true?"

"It is," Fuguki answered woodenly. "I was never intending to stab you. I was planning on holding it to the back of your neck, nothing more. To prove a point."

"And what point is that?"

"That he shouldn't be here!" Fuguki suddenly roared, shocking Kisame backwards and silencing the rest of the room, who had been getting to their feet in various stages and levels of quiet. "When we came to you, we wanted a leader, not a soft old man who couldn't stand to leave his little pet behind! An outsider like him has no purpose here! And to make it worse, he's crippled and useless! We all know why he's really here- he's your little fucktoy, isn't he?"

Even Itachi sucked in a breath at Fuguki's crude words, anger coursing through his system. How dare he call him a mere fucktoy! Though, of course, Itachi and Kisame had had sex before, but that was completely beside the point! A _fucktoy_?!

Kisame leaned forward to tell Fuguki off, but Itachi beat him to it, grinding his face back into the floor.

"A _fucktoy_?!" He hissed into Fuguki's ear, grabbing his head by the hair and pulling it back only to slam it into the ground again. " _That's_ what you think I am? How dare you! You have no idea the things I've survived in my life!"

"Itachi-" Kisame started, but Itachi stabbed a finger in his direction.

"No, I am not listening to you right now! Fuck the plan; it's useless if they can't even take me seriously!" Itachi grabbed the hair on the back of Fuguki's head, winding his fingers through it so it would tug painfully. "Let me tell you something very clearly," he hissed directly into Fuguki's ear, his breath fanning over the back of his neck and causing a shiver down his spine that Itachi found himself sadistically pleased by. "I may be blind, but that does not mean I'm crippled or useless. Before they were destroyed, these eyes saw things your fucking little mind could never even _try_ to dream of. Why else would a man do _this_ to himself?"

His hand whipped up to tear his bandana off, but stalled, shaking, right before his fingers brushed up against the fabric, his anger melting away into the familiar shame that had ruled his life for the years he had spent locked up in his father's hospital. Kisame's weight shifted before him, the sound galvanizing Itachi into action before he could protest again. His fingers touched the fabric over his empty eye sockets, curling around the band in preparation to tug it off. Once, twice, he tried to remove it, but both times his nerve failed him. _Well, third time's a charm,_ he thought dimly, and taking a deep breath, pulled the bandana from his vacant eye sockets.

A rumble traveled around the room, ranging from shocked gasps and mutters to murmurs of surprise from the few who had seen him when they had escaped the hospital and known surmised his desire to keep the scars private. Beneath him, he felt Fuguki shift so he could turn his head and look up at Itachi's face, and the weight of his gaze settled against his skin like the prickling burn of light magnified through a lense to increase its strength. Around the room, other points of magnified light settled on him until the heat grew so great he thought he wouldn't be able to stand it and sweat started to seep from his brow, but Kisame reached down and pulled him to his feet, tucking him gently against his chest to shield him from the scorching weight of the gazes.

"You didn't have to do that," he whispered quietly in Itachi's ear, taking the bandana from his hands and reaffixing it to his face, smoothing his hair under the knot to remove any flyaway strands.

"And I think I did, so we're even." Itachi allowed himself to be held for a few moments longer before he sighed and pushed himself out of Kisame's embrace, back into the litany of stares holding him hostage. Tilting his head to the side as if in consideration, he moved back to where Fuguki lay on the floor and squatted down next to him.

"I am not an invalid, nor am I anybody's pet," he said clearly, reaching down and resting a hand on Fuguki's shoulder. "I am an individual with strengths and weaknesses, much like you; my weaknesses just happen to be a little more visible than some. I am here for two reasons alone: because where I was before was a clinical hell your Boss thought no man should have to endure, and he thought I could help this group and find a place within it. And if you can't respect the decision of someone you decided to call your Boss and Leader, you're in the wrong line of work."

The room echoed with silence for a few second before Itachi removed his hand from Fuguki's shoulder and held it out in front of him. Everyone waited, breathless, as another second ticked by before Fuguki moved from his position on the ground and took Itachi's hand, allowing the blind man to help him to his feet.

"Thang you bery buch," he said thickly, his words distorted so much that Itachi could barely understand him, and he quickly reached up and touched Fuguki's upper lip, finding it wet with blood.

"My goodness, your nose must be completely broken! I'm dreadfully sorry about that. Here, let me examine it."

Without waiting for permission, Itachi shoved Fuguki back into his chair and pushed his head forward so the blood would drain out his nose and not go down the back of his throat. With gentle fingers, he explored the crooked ridge of the other man's nose, whistling at the damage he found.

"Yep, it's definitely broken. It has to be set soon, otherwise it will heal crooked like this. This will hurt, but only for a moment."

With a sharp tug, Itachi realigned the bones in Fuguki's nose before he could protest, dragging a howl of pain from him before he quieted, and whispered again, "Thang you."

"It's no problem. Nasal fractures take about six weeks to fully heal, and you should avoid any activity that might cause another break for at least one or two weeks. Take Tylenol for the pain if you need it, and I can fix you up with something you can wear on your nose like a cast for the next couple of weeks if you want."

After a long pause, Itachi heard him nod. "Yes, blease."

"Excellent. Find me after the meeting is over and I'll make it for you. And someone get him some tissues so he doesn't bleed all over himself." He turned back to the crown of people who Itachi had knocked to the floor. "Anyone else got any injuries? Broken bones, sprains? They're best treated fresh."

"Um…" A voice tinged with pain quietly ventured, and Itachi recognized it as someone who Kisame had addressed before as Jinin. "My, ah, shoulder really hurts… I don't know if there's something wrong with it or not, but I can't move my arm…"

"Well, that's usually a sign that something's wrong, Jinin. Come here and let me have a- well, you know."

Jinin moved closer to Itachi, his footsteps hesitant. "How did you know it was me?" He asked, hovering just out of reach.

"Your voice is very distinctive," he answered with a crook of his finger. "Now are you going to let me examine you, or are you just going to sit there in pain for the rest of the meeting?"

Apparently that was enough to satisfy the suspicious man, because he slowly extended his arm forward and allowed Itachi to grab it, pushing up his sleeve to feel his shoulder. He whistled in surprise at the damage he found there.

"It's dislocated. That must hurt a lot; I'm impressed you're still as coherent as you are. Here: this will only take a moment. Please relax."

Itachi's grip on Jinin's arm suddenly tightened viciously, and he carefully but swiftly pulled the arm up above Jinin's head and around to pop the bone back into the socket, a move he had seen doctors perform on small children a thousand times before when he used to intern at his father's hospital. Jinin let out a strangled yell and yanked his arm out of Itachi's grasp, steaming with anger and ready to deck him.

"WHAT THE HELL, YOU MOTHERFUCK- oh. It doesn't hurt anymore."

"Fortunately, dislocations are relatively easy to fix," Itachi said amicably, cracking his knuckles. "Provided you know what you're doing, that it. Is there anyone else?"

After seeing Itachi's success with both Fuguki and Jinin, several more people came forward with injuries, and he identified and treated a dislocated finger, a sprained wrist, a bump on the head, and two false alarms that were only slightly severe bruising before everyone else had made it back to the table and sat back down. The last people to sit were Kisame and Itachi himself, who insisted on examining his almost nonexistent wounds before the meeting started up again.

As Itachi was brushing his fingers over Kisame's cracked and slightly bleeding knuckles, he murmured, "Showoff."

"Hark who's talking," Kisame shot right back under his breath. "I didn't know you had any medical training."

"I don't really; I was a set in a track to become a doctor, but I never got far enough before my, ah, _accident_ to reach the practical stuff. Most of what I know I learned from working as an intern in my father's hospital and watching the doctors- though, I suppose I could count that as medical training." He patted the back of Kisame's hand. "You're fine. No bruising, even. What are you, some kind of monster?"

"Some people have called me that," he joked, though Itachi could hear an underlying note of sadness that anyone else might have missed, which made him wish he hadn't brought it up. "We have a job to do now, though, so that story will have to wait for another time. Sit down and I'll start the meeting again."

Itachi did as he was bid, and Kisame sat down next to him after putting his holster and suit jacket back on. It was hard to tell under the occasional hisses and grunts of pain that stood as a reminder of the brawl that had taken place just a few short minutes before, but Itachi thought he could feel a more respectful air permeating the room, and not just aimed at Kisame. When he was settled into his chair, Kisame steepled his hands and swept his gaze around the table.

"Now that we've got that out of the way," he announced, "I think we should try to start this meeting again. Hello, everyone: my name is Kisame, and I'm going to be your new Boss from now on. This, sitting next to me, is an advisor of mine, Itachi, and he _will_ be afforded the same respect as any other member of this group. Now, as some of you have so astutely recognized already, I am most certainly not my father, who was the previous Boss of this group, and I am going to run things differently than he did. It has also come to my attention that the prowess our gang has slipped in the eyes of surrounding groups, something that could cause us unnecessary hardship if we are constantly being underestimated and thus made a target of more violence than we can handle. I have an idea to combat this: instead of building the image of the gang back up, we change it completely, starting with a new name. When my father became Boss of this group, he changed the name from Mist to the Sword Ninjas. I'd like to propose that we change it back. What is everyone's thoughts on this? The floor is now open."

* * *

"God, that was exhausting," Kisame moaned into his pillow several hours later, having flopped onto his bed without any preamble.

His lips pulling up into an indulgent smile, Itachi sat down next to him and brushed his fingers through his short hair. "You did well."

"I can't believe we got them to agree to the name change!" He shook his head against the pillow, his words muffled by its softness. "With the amount of time it took going around and around, I thought they would stop arguing."

"Miru was a very helpful voice," Itachi mused. "You should thank her soon. I think she's quickly becoming our best ally here."

"And Fuguki?"

"Well… at least he's not deliberately trying to sabotage us anymore," Itachi admitted, "though I doubt he's fully satisfied. He definitely wanted the position as Boss, and it's chafing him to submit to someone he doesn't view as worthy. After today, though, I doubt he'll be so open about any insubordination, so we should be safe. Or at least safer."

"That's what I like to hear." Kisame pushed himself out of his pillow so he could look at Itachi's face. "So did you pick up any more useful tidbits today?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I did." Itachi smirked and drew himself up taller. "Miru told me today that Raiga can often be unpredictable and explosive, and the only person who can calm him down when he gets like that is a young boy named Ranmaru who is currently in the hospital with bad injuries. If you visit him there, you'll likely win points with Raiga, and if I remember correctly, there's another member there as well, Juzu, who you might also want to consider visiting. It will show your dedication to the individual members of the group, if nothing else."

"Visit the members in the hospital- got it. I'll put it on the schedule for tomorrow if we have time. Anything else?"

"Hmm… nope, I think that's it." A yawn suddenly split Itachi's face open, and he stood up from Kisame's bed. "I think I should probably turn in. It's been a long evening. 'Night, Kisame."

After the first night, Itachi had been moved to a room that conjoined Kisame's by the walk-in closet, so Kisame could check up on him without needing to go into the hallway if needed. At least, that was the excuse they had given. With a sigh, Itachi removed the holster and gun from his belt and laid it on Kisame's dresser, then turned to go, but was stopped by a hand fastening to his wrist and keeping him in place.

"And where do you think you're going?" Kisame growled, a hint of seductiveness in his voice that made Itachi's knees instantly weak.

"To bed," he replied with a hint of a smile, already having figured out where this was going and decided to play along.

"Exactly." Kisame gave a sharp tug and pulled Itachi down onto his bed, curling one arm around him. "You know," he murmured in Itachi's ear, the warmth of his breath tickling against his neck, "I said I wouldn't let you say it and I promised myself I wouldn't do anything that might affect your decision, but all I could think when you were taking charge back there was that you looked _so hot_ \- especially with that gun at your waist."

"Oh, _really_?" Itachi couldn't hide his pleased grin, and he broke from Kisame's embrace to straddle his hips and pin his shoulders against the mattress with his hands. "So you like it when I'm a little bit of a spitfire, do you?"

"Mmm, yeah…" Kisame shifted under Itachi and folded his hands behind his head to give him better access. "I liked that side of you. You should act like that more often."

"Well, if it leads to this…" Itachi grasped Kisame's cheeks and used them as a guide to find his lips, kissing him gently before pulling back with a wicked grin. "I will definitely try."


	18. Onward to Destiny

Here we go again! A little shorter, but so was the wait time!

* * *

Neji hurried through the corridors of the Hyuuga compound for the second time that day, though this time his steps were made quick not by annoyance but by real fear. His hair lay frizzy and damp around his shoulders, his clothes had been thrown on haphazardly, and in one hand he carried a crumpled paper map with desperate scribbles on it, but luckily it was now evening, and most of the people who normally gathered in the compound had left for their individual homes, so there was hardly any people left to witness his inglorious passing.

He made his way to the dark hallway he had only barely managed to escape from earlier that day, but all the emotions that had bubbled over then were safely locked away now, hidden under his pragmatic need for action. He had been reminded that there were more people out in the world besides him, and even if he couldn't fix his own problems, there were other problems out there that were his job to fix. There was no one waiting in the line of chairs outside the double doors leading to the elder's courtroom, so Neji ran up to the door and pounded three times on it, hard knocks that reverberated through the hall, before stepping back and attempting to calm his haggard appearance before it opened. If it would open. Most of the elders were likely to have gone home by now, so he would be lucky to catch them for long enough to state his findings. Maybe the doorman would still be there at least, and he could leave a message.

To his surprise, it wasn't the doorman who opened the massive double doors a few seconds later, but his grandfather, the Elder himself. The surprise on his face was mirrored on Neji's own as he pushed the door open wider.

"Good God, Neji! What's going on? Come in, come in!"

"Thank… thank you," Neji panted, taking the route offered him and joining his grandfather in the elder's courtroom. The place was almost deserted - even the doorman had already gone - save for a few members locked in a heated discussion that was quickly silenced as soon as they saw Neji.

When Neji had passed through the doors, they were quickly shut behind him. In the full courtroom, the sound held a sense of finality, but in the more casual setting, the effect was rather lost. A pressure settled on Neji's shoulder, and he looked back to see his grandfather resting a comforting hand there.

"What's got you in a dander, Neji?" He asked with a facade of calm overlaying a harder expression in his eyes. "Enough that you had to come see us in person, and after hours?"

 _You haven't come to try and change our minds on the engagement again, have you?_ Those deceptively cold eyes asked, but Neji didn't have enough space in his mind right then to worry about Hinata or the engagement. Or even if he did, he chose to spend it on something he viewed as a more pressing matter.

"Forgive me my disheveled appearance, Grandfather," he gasped out, still out of breath from running so far. "I wasn't sure if I would make it in time. I had to see someone from the elder's council before the end of the day. I'm calling in a code orange."

The few elders who were standing in the center of the room stiffened at the words, and Neji's grandfather's hand tightened on his shoulder.

"Are you sure?" He rasped, his face taking on a gaunt quality. "Where? How much time do we have?"

His sudden change of attitude was understandable. As a File Operator, one of Neji's jobs was to read through all the monthly reports of local spectral activity, and as the Seattle liaison, he was also in charge of reading and filing a comprehensive report from each of the other File Operators. The single most important action someone could take as a File Operator was calling in a code to the elders, because it meant they had identified a problem that would now have to be resolved.

Neji rarely had to call a code himself for a location outside his personal reason, as the local File Operator would likely beat him to it unless they were absolutely terrible at their job, but in that case, they wouldn't last long anyway. When he did call them, however, that only made the elders listen to him all the harder for it.

There were several tiers of codes designated with different colors depending on the kind of emergency they represented. A code blue was the kind most often called, which meant there was a human outside the family - or the Uchiha family - that had seen someone work and had grown suspicious. It was the least of the codes someone could call in, and also the most recently added. Technically, Neji should have called in a code blue after the fiasco in Konoha several weeks earlier, but hadn't, for obvious reasons.

A code yellow meant that a potentially bad situation had been identified before it could become a problem. This usually meant that someone died who it was thought to have the potential to become a draugr, or a draugr or other powerful ghost was found in the earliest stages of formation. They were easily dealt with at that stage, but if they slipped through the tight net of the Hyuuga, they had the potential to become a code orange.

Unlike a code yellow or blue, which could be left for a short period of time before an emergency arose, a code orange required immediate attention. It was the code that meant a draugr, wraith, or other dangerous spirit had been discovered and needed to be dealt with. There was only one other code that was ranked higher, and that was code red, which was only used after a body had been found or a person had gone missing.

"New York," Neji answered his grandfather's long-forgotten question.

"New York? As in, New York City?" A frown crept across the Elder's face. "Isn't that in Tokuma's region? Why isn't he calling in the code?"

"Let me show you."

Darting over to the nearest beach where the lowest tier of elders would sit when their court was in session, Neji smoothed out the crumpled piece of paper in his hand and hunched over it. On both sides and behind him, he felt the presences of the elders who had still been in the room m loom towards him to see, his grandfather directly over his left shoulder.

"Here." He pointed to a spot he had marked on the map, a small town in New Jersey, then traced his finger in a semicircle through all the other marks he had made before coming to a stop on New York City. "And these as well, ending right here. Each is a case of unsolved arson, suspected spectral influence. Spanning two regions, so neither File Operator noticed on their own."

One of the elders behind Neji gave a delicate cough. "I will admit that this is cause for worry, but a code orange on this information alone? It just doesn't seem worrisome enough."

"That's what I thought too," Neji admitted, "until I got a call from Iroha, the Boston File Operator, this afternoon. One of his men was caught and burned fairly badly in this fire-" his finger moved to the fire in question, in Connecticut "-and he said he just woke up and started raving that the fire was set on purpose, to get rid of him, and by a wraith."

"By a wraith?" The Elder said sharply, his gaze narrowing. "That's exactly what he said? A wraith?"

"Yes." Neji took a deep breath. This was going to be the hard part- especially in such close quarters to this many elders. He would have to watch every word he said very carefully. "And there was one other thing, something that made everything else click into place. A word: Akatsuki. Apparently, the man said it during his ravings."

Hot breath from an elder leaning closer hit the back of Neji's neck. "Akatsuki? What does that mean?"

"When Sasuke and I were… investigating in Konoha a week ago," Neji said in a measured breath, feeling his heart start to race, "we decided that there were wraiths in Konica at some point, but they had left and are now somewhere else. During our investigation, we discovered that the particular group that had been there had called themselves the Akatsuki… and there was also evidence to suggest that one of the wraiths may have been a pyrokinetic."

"Good God…" the Elder whispered almost under his breath. "And so this group might now be in New York City? How many, do you think?"

"Three… maybe four."

"Four?!" The elders surrounding Neji all sucked in breaths of differing force.

"Thank you for calling this to our attention, Neji," his grandfather said with a look of calm that belies the panic he himself was feeling. "We will dispatch as appropriate response from the local area immediately-"

"No!" Neji yelled instinctively, then winced when he saw the elders around him draw back with puzzled and slightly angry expressions. "I mean, no, please let me go instead. I don't really have any concrete proof, just a name and a hunch, and that's going to be difficult for someone to work with. Besides, I might notice things others wouldn't because of the time I spent in Konoha. I've already spoken to Sasuke, and he's willing to be my partner if you approve."

The skin around the Elder's eyes tightened. Neji held his breath, waiting for a response. The way he'd gone about that, arranging things without asking the elders' permission first, was unorthodox and risky. If he was in front of the full council instead of just a few members, he would never get away with it. As it was, he could see the gears turning in his grandfather's mind, weighing the benefits of proper respect versus the faultless plan Neji had already come up with.

Neji saw it in his eyes when efficiency won out over power, and the Elder nodded. "Fine. We'll make an official request for him. Anything else?"

Hesitating slightly before answering, Neji said, "I can't - _won't_ \- bring Hinata with me. I brought her to Konoha, but that would have only been a code yellow if the Uchihas used our system. I can't bring her to the scene of a code orange; she's not ready yet."

"Fair enough." The Elder nodded, and Neji couldn't help but feel surprised at the ease with which he agreed. "We'll find someone suitable to take over her training during the time you are away, and perhaps the time away from you will allow her to look upon the news of your betrothal in a different light."

So that was his game. But Neji refused to show that he had been effected, or even let himself be affected; right now, he had a job to do, and that was all that was on his mind. He inclined his head to his grandfather.

"Understood. As time is of the essence in this case, I would like your permission to leave as soon as I can."

"Permission granted," the Elder said with a nod, touching his grandson on the shoulder. He looked like he wanted to say something, but finally shook his head and gave a terse grunt. "Good luck, Neji. Stay safe."

As this was the most grandfatherly thing the Elder had ever done for him, Neji couldn't refuse him a small smile. "Thank you. I'll return soon, don't worry."

"Yes." Turning brusquely away from Neji, the Elder laid his hands flat against the table. "You are dismissed."

"Thank you, Grandfather." Neji inclined his head one last time before turning to go, calmly leaving the depths of a room he had barely escaped from earlier that day. When the doors boomed shut behind him, the Elder sighed and sat down with hunching shoulders, looking suddenly older than he had before.

"I'm getting too old for this," he murmured, rubbing the bridge of his nose with a pained expression before asking the room at large, "Would anyone happen to have any Tylenol on them?"

"I do," the woman to his left said, rummaging through a small purse and drawing out a couple of pills, which she handed him.

"Thank you." The Elder took the pills and swallowed them dry, grimacing. "Gah. That never gets any better."

"He certainly is something," another one of the elders said almost wondrously with his gaze glued to the door Neji had just exited, shaking his head in amazement. "His professionalism is remarkable. Do you think he'll ever catch on to what we're planning for him?"

"I doubt it," the Elder sighed, letting his shoulders droop. "He's far too complacent with his lot in life to think of bettering himself- just as we raised him to be. Honestly, though… I was wondering if we should just tell him."

"Tell him!?" The elder who had given him the Tylenol slammed her hands down on the table in front of him. "And waste all the years of secrecy thus far? Why would you even suggest such a thing!?"

"Because Neji's not a little boy anymore," the Elder said in a tired voice, rubbing bleary eyes that, up close, appeared to be affected by cataracts. "And I'm not as young as I used to be, either. If we don't tell him soon, we might not have the chance to do so properly."

"Lord Hyuuga…" The youngest elder there, a man of perhaps sixty, laid his hand on the Elder's shoulder. "There is still time. Neji is a bright lad. He'll figure it out in time, when he needs to."

"I hope you're right." _Because if you're not_ , the Elder added in his head, _I won't have time to find anyone else._

* * *

Back at his apartment, Neji threw a few sets of clothes into a small suitcase, not bothering to separate his socks and his underwear- which was as haphazard as he got. He only had three hours before the flight he would be taking to the JFK International Airport in New York City was scheduled to leave the Seattle Airport, and counting on summer lines he would need to be there at least one and a half hours before that, preferably two, which left him with an hour maximum to finish packing and make it to the airport.

Somehow, the act of making a timeline in his head calmed Neji. Taking a deep breath, he pulled on his raincoat - which he had retrieved from the coatroom in the Hyuuga compound during the second visit of the day - and grabbed his suitcase by the handle, ready to make his exit.

Right before his hand touched the doorknob, though, a thought he hadn't intended to think made its way into his head. _Shikamaru said he would be coming back tomorrow. He won't know where you are._

 _And he shouldn't need to!_ Neji retorted to his mind, reaching for the handle of the door again, but paused once more at his inner voice's snide next words.

 _And what will he think when he comes back to find you gone? That you've run away from him? What will he do then? Something stupid enough to catch the attention of a less agreeable member of your family?_

 _Dammit!_ Neji swore at his mind, snatching his fingers away from the door handle as if burned him. Dropping his suitcase on the floor in front of his apartment door, he hurried his computer and snatched up a piece of paper from the printer, tearing it in half for a better size to leave a note on. His eyes searched for a moment before he located the nearest pen and snatched it up.

 _S~_ he wrote at the top of the page, hoping Shikamaru would be able to tell it was for him.

 _S~_

 _I'm in New York for work. It was important and I had to leave as soon as I could. I don't know when I'll be back; it may be a few days, maybe a week. I think it would be for the best if you didn't follow me._

 _Neji H._

Neji folded the note in half, then thought of something else and unfolded it again.

 _P.S. The elders got wind of that little stunt you pulled a few days ago. PLEASE be careful of where you go and what you do from now on, or they_ will _catch you. I'm serious._

Tilting his head to the side, Neji considered his plea, then underlined the word PLEASE. Twice. Satisfied that his intent would now be passed on clearly in his message, he refolded it and cast his eye around for a good place to leave it.

He couldn't leave it laying around just anywhere because a copy of his key was in file at the Hyuuga compound so if a problem arose while he was away, someone could come in and look at his computer and the filing he had done, and a note like that would be pretty hard to explain if someone found it on his kitchen counter. Biting his lip in thought, Neji moved to his bedroom, drumming his fingers against the doorframe as he looked for a place that would be both out of the way and an intuitive hiding spot.

His face lit up when his eyes landed in the chessboard shoved haphazardly under the corner of his bed, barely peeking out from underneath the blankets hanging off the edge. Perfect. Pulling out the chessboard, Neji repositioned it on his bedside table, then folded the note one more time to make it smaller and tucked it under the base of the white king. There. It was out of the way enough that only the nosiest of snoopers would discover it, but intuitive enough that Shikamaru was bound to find it without too much trouble.

Pulling back, Neji retreated to the door of his room only to pause a third time with his hand on the handle and the pen still in his grasp. Running through his mind a second time, the message now seemed impersonal and cold. He hadn't intended it to come out that way, but it had, and he didn't want to leave that kind of a message for Shikamaru, especially in the light of everything that had happened earlier that day.

Probably against his better judgement, Neji made his way back to the chessboard and picked up the note, opening it so he could see the words he had written. His pen drifted to the bottom right-hand corner of the paper, and after he had reread the message, he pressed down on the paper where the pen had drifted and wrote a few more words.

 _P. P. S._

 _Miss you._

He regretted the additional postscript almost as soon as he'd written it, but not enough to tear it off the original note. Feeling a little like he was doing something he shouldn't, Neji quickly replaced the note under the base of the white king and retreated from the room before he could convince himself to destroy the note and the traitorous last words it contained.

His nerves strung too tightly to do anything else, Neji marched to his apartment door, picked up his suitcase, and fled outside, letting the door slam shut behind him without a backwards glance. It would lock automatically.

Wan light peeked through the clouds overhead, and Neji glanced briefly upwards in surprise and gratitude. A second quick glance down at his watch confirmed that he was ahead of his self-set schedule, so he deliberately slowed his pace by a fraction of a second to better enjoy the rare good weather.


	19. Vengeance or Revenge

Back at it with everyone's favorite gangstas! And the plot ramps up!

Thank you Falainakorna for an amazing review! Hope to see you again next chapter!

* * *

"I still don't think this is any better of an idea than I did last time," Kisame hissed into Itachi's ear as they stood in front of the door to the late Previous Boss's room.

Itachi silently agreed with him, but didn't make the same observation out loud. "It has to be done, Kisame. For our protection… and for his as well."

"For _him?_ " Kisame gave a disparaging snort. "After what that old man did to me - and to you now, don't you forget - he's lucky I didn't pull his plug on life myself. And now you're telling me I need to protect his _ghost?_ No way. I ain't doing it."

"You said 'ain't'," Itachi smiled.

"I did, didn't I?" Kisame sounded pleased with himself. "Do I sound like a proper uneducated petty criminal now?"

"Not quite, but you're getting there." The smile faded from Itachi's face. "It's not about protecting him in the sense you might of someone still alive, but more… protecting him from himself, and in doing so, protecting ourselves. New ghosts are an awful lot like babies; they take a long time to grow up and become cognisant enough to communicate, or even take on a human-like appearance."

"So, right now, my father's ghost is like… a baby?" Kisame asked uncertainly.

"A little bit older. A toddler, perhaps, in the midst of his terrible twos. That's why we need to stop him now, because three-year-olds have a tendency to pitch nasty tantrums, and the same is true for ghosts."

"And these… _tantrums_ … are they dangerous?"

"Only if you're in the right place at the extraordinarily wrong time, or the deceased has a pre-existing grudge against you." Itachi squared his shoulders confidently, despite the nervous tension in his stomach that made him feel like he needed to vomit again. "So we should be fine."

" _Should be_?" Kisame stressed. "And why am I coming with you this time, anyway? Didn't you threaten me under pain of death last time to not open the door despite anything I heard or something like that?"

"Yes, I did say something to that effect," Itachi admitted, "but I've changed my mind. I want you there."

"But why?"

But Itachi brushed the words off, reaching blindly for the door handle. "Just a hunch. Come on; we don't have all night. If Miru catches us here a second time, she's bound to get even more suspicious than she already is."

"I suppose you're right," Kisame said with a sigh. "It's to your right, about three inches."

"Thank you." Itachi fixed his position according to the calibration Kisame had given him and quickly found the door handle. His hand rested on it for a moment, his body unable to perform the necessary actions to open it even though his brain had already issued the command. Then a much larger hand settled over his, jumping him at first but soon relaxing him with its gentle warmth.

"On three," Kisame said quietly next to his ear, and Itachi nodded back.

"One… two… three."

On three, their hands pressed down together and opened the door. It swung outward, and Kisame pulled Itachi out of the way with a strong arm looped around his waist. He was about to protest that he didn't need Kisame's help, but decided against it when he realized that his hands were shaking.

The air inside the room was inexplicably colder than the air in the hallway, and Itachi felt Kisame shiver next to him.

"Damn, there really is something here," he muttered, the words tickling the back of Itachi's neck. "I mean… I believed it, but…"

"But hearing about something and seeing it for yourself are two very different things," Itachi finished for him, feeling the appreciate nod Kisame gave him at the words.

"Yes, exactly." He drew in a deep breath. "I don't know what I could possibly do to help you in this, but… let's do this."

"Agreed." Itachi instinctively reached down and wove his fingers through Kisame's larger ones as he cautiously slipped one foot forwards so as to not disturb the line of salt he had placed around the room. He couldn't feel the pre-wraith inside the room stirring, but that didn't mean it wasn't watching them. "Watch the line of salt when you go through the door."

"I have a better idea." Without giving Itachi any warning as to his plan, Kisame swept him up in his arms and crossed the line of salt spanning the threshold without disturbing it, then just as quickly dropped him on his feet again and reached behind them to shut the door, all before Itachi could make even a peep of protest.

"Kisame!" He hissed into the unearthly silence of the room as soon as he found his voice again. "You didn't…! I don't need…!"

"You just concentrate on doing your job, Itachi," Kisame said with a pat on the back that almost sent Itachi sprawling, "and let me do the rest. Fair?"

Grudgingly, Itachi admitted, "Fair." Then he straightened his back as if he wasn't feeling spiders crawl down his spine in an endless parade and lifted his chin. "Do you see where I dropped the knife?"

"Yeah, it's right here."

Itachi heard Kisame shuffling forward, then bending down to retrieve the blade. As he did, Itachi felt a wave of dark energy roll over the room and turn his stomach, and he hastily beckoned Kisame back.

"Quick, give me the knife, and get behind me!"

Hurrying back, Kisame did as he was bid and ducked behind Itachi's small back as he held the knife out in front of them to ward off the malicious aura now slowly crawling towards them. The point wavered in the air as Itachi's arms shook harder than picture frames propped up on a desk in an earthquake, threatening to fall like frames in an earthquake as well. Again, memories of desolate abandoned warehouses and seething, slickly green light poured into Itachi's mind, and his breathing grew louder and more rapid until a hand came down on his shoulder, freezing his entire body in place- which, at least, stopped his limbs from trembling.

"Itachi!? What's going on? I- I can't see!"

The words jolted Itachi enough to come to his senses, and he sucked in a deep breath, jump-starting the rhythms of his body again. "Did the lights go out?"

"The switch is still on, but it's like the bulb broke. What's happening? Are we… are we in trouble?"

 _Not yet,_ Itachi wanted to say back, but he just gripped the hilt of the knife tighter to stop its wavering and took a step toward the center of the room. If the ghost could now affect the physical realm, even with such a tiny thing as dimming a bulb, it meant he was getting stronger.

"Show yourself!" He snapped, and felt the ball of energy recoil at his demand. Behind him, Kisame shivered, and Itachi suddenly felt a wave of warmth clutch at his heart.

 _So this is how it feels to protect instead of be protected,_ he marveled, then squared his shoulders more securely when he felt tendrils of energy pouring out towards him again.

"M… my… son…"

Those words came again, hoarse and gritty, and Itachi felt a flash of satisfaction when he realized his hunch had been correct. Twice now, the first words the ghost had spoken had been for Kisame, and Miru had said that he'd always believed that Kisame would return. He was likely still waiting. Perhaps, if he saw Kisame now, before he became a wraith, he might fade without progressing any further.

"My… son…. My son…"

"He's here," Itachi announced, both to the wraith and the man behind him, and Kisame stiffened.

"Itachi, what are you doing?"

But Itachi didn't respond; his attention was laser focused on the ghost in front of him, who was now roiling in confusion.

"My son… is here…? But you… you aren't him…. You _smell_ like him though…"

A heavy hand landed on Itachi's shoulder. "Itachi, please tell me what's going on!"

"Just trust me," he whispered low enough that the roiling mass of spectral energy in front of them wouldn't hear. "Please?"

After a few seconds, the hand slipped off Itachi's shoulder. "Okay. Okay, I'll trust you. Just please… tell me you know what you're doing."

"None of us ever know what we're doing, Kisame. That's our biggest secret… sometimes everything works out, and sometimes people end up like me." He shook his head. "But I have faced worse situations."

And not just the wraith who had driven him mad, though now that he had something else to focus on besides the swirling mass of energy, Itachi could feel the definitive differences between them, and its presence no longer made him want to scratch out his non-existent eyes again. As the rising young star of the Uchiha family that he had been, he had seen his fair share of action.

Raising his voice again, Itachi addressed the pre-wraith. "Why do you want to see him?"

The words rang in the air, but the ball of spectral energy didn't react, moaning out again, "My son… he left me…"

"Listen to me!"

The shout shocked the roiling energy into stillness, then a single tendril of darkness made its way toward Itachi. "Who… who are… you?"

"I said, why do you want to see him?"

"Why… why…?" The energy tendril swirled directly in front of Itachi's face, forming a spiral not unlike a question mark. "He's… he's my son…"

"That didn't answer my question!"

"What… what other answer… is there?"

Itachi sucked in a breath. If what he was saying was true, then it might simplify things quite a bit. "And what would you do if you could see him again? Right now?"

"See… see him?" The ghost's attention perked up, but glossed over the question. "He's here? I can… see him?"

"What would you do?" Itachi repeated, but louder, holding his knife higher when the tendril of energy came too close for comfort.

"I just want to… just want to see his face one more time," the gravely voice replied, this time in a whisper. "I always knew… he would return… one day."

 _Yes!_ Itachi's hunch had been right. It was the simple love of a father for his son that caused this ghost to stay behind, nothing more. Of course, that didn't change the fact that he was a pre-wraith with tendencies leaning just a little bit too close for comfort toward the destructive, as he had already demonstrated with the light he'd dimmed. It just made him easier to convince to fade before it was too late.

"Have your eyes adjusted yet?" He whispered out of the corner of his mouth to Kisame.

"Just about," came the reply. "There's just barely enough light from the window to see by."

"Good." Itachi took a deep breath. "Kisame, do you trust me?"

"I thought we had already established that."

Itachi's grip tightened around the hilt of the silver blade. "Then I need you to do _exactly_ as I say. On a count of three, I'm going to step away from you so the ghost can see you. He should not attack you. Theoretically. However, if he does, I need you to stand completely still, no matter what you may see or hear happening. I can pinpoint his location and fight him off, but I can't do that and avoid you at the same time if you're moving. Understood?"

There was a beat of shocked silence as Kisame processed his words, then a nervous swallow. "Un- understood."

"Good." Itachi nodded, as if to convince himself of the validity of his plan, while the viscous lump of energy hovering in front of him ignored him and began to moan about his son again. "On three, then?"

"W-wait!" A frantic hand suddenly clutched Itachi's shoulder. "I- I don't think I can do this, Itachi. My father and I never got along very well; he probably doesn't even want to see me. Maybe we should just… try something else! Like using the knife or something."

"Using the knife?" Itachi brought the knife up and tapped the flat of the blade against the bandana wrapped around his empty eye sockets. In front of him, the pre-wraith flinched away from the movement of the silver, but otherwise made no sign that he was even paying attention to them. "Sure, I could use the knife. If you want to witness the second violent murder you father will have had to experience and damn him to an eternity of non-existence instead of going where he was supposed to go, which he would do if we could convince him to fade naturally… but the choice is yours. He is your father, after all."

"Violent… murder?" Kisame asked in a quiet voice. "Would it really feel like that to him?"

"Let me just put it this way: from the outside, the forcible 'death', so to speak, of a ghost looks an awful lot like the event horizon of a black hole beyond which nothing can escape. It's not pretty, believe me."

"That's… awful."

"Yes, it is." Itach squared his shoulders. "So, are we doing this the diplomatic way, or the hard way?"

Kisame remained silent for a moment before an almost-sigh leaked from his lips. "Diplomatic, I guess."

"On my count, then. One…"

"Two…" Kisame nervously echoed.

"Three!"

On the last count, Itachi ducked out of the way, leaving Kisame standing almost face to face - though he couldn't see him - with his father's ghost. He held his breath, waiting for the pre-wraith to notice the "newcomer" to the room and react to him, but as the seconds ticked by, nothing happened except the continued rolling of energy in the center of the room and moans of, "My… son…"

"Nothing's happening," Kisame finally said into what was, for him, the silence of an empty room.

"Brilliant deduction, Sherlock!" Itachi hissed, making himself even smaller as he crouched down toward the floor. "Try to catch his attention! Wave your arms around, or yell or something!"

"Wave my arms around- do I look like a suicidal idiot to you!?" But after a few seconds, Kisame did it anyway, raising his voice and waving at the ghost to catch its attention. "Hey, um… Dad? Is that you?"

The ghost froze at the sound of Kisame's voice, then just as quickly began to move again, shattering and reforming a thousand times a second as it tried to process what the words meant. "D…Dad? Does that mean… my son is here? Does he… want to… see me?"

"Tell him that it's really you," Itachi quickly hissed out of the corner of his mouth.

"It's really me, Dad," Kisame dutifully responded, though he had no way of knowing the words that had been said. "It's… Kisame. I came home to see you again."

"Kisame!" The mounting boil of energy in the center of the room suddenly exploded, shattering a window Itachi hadn't known was there, then reformed just as quickly in a more organized shape, rushing towards Kisame.

Acting on pure instinct, Itachi threw himself in between Kisame and the ghost rushing headlong in his direction, hauling up his silver blade in sweaty hands to act as a deterrent. The ghost managed to stop himself just before he ran into the knife point, though displeasure radiated from him at the action.

"Why do you stand between myself and my son?"

The spectral voice that rang through the room was no longer coarse and gravelly, but full and rich, like it had come from the throat of a man. Itachi felt a familiar quake of fear start to push its way up his spine at the sound; it was too familiar for his liking and brought up layers of painful memories he would rather leave buried. But he pushed it back down and squared his shoulders despite the tremors that plagued his arms.

"What do you plan to do to him?"

"I _plan_ ," the ghost sneered, sounding exactly how Itachi pictured a mob Boss to sound, "to look at my estranged son, whom I haven't seen in over a decade, and then hug him. Do I have your permission to do so, little guard dog?"

Itachi was starting to get sick of that particular insult. "Fine. But just so you know, I'm not leaving."

"Figures my son would pick up a little pet like you," the ghost muttered under his breath, obviously not planning on Itachi hearing, then said, "Yes, I suppose you won't. Now may I see me son? _Please_ , if it's required?"

"I _suppose_ you may," Itachi snapped back waspishly. He wasn't angry at a dead person. Not at all. Completely calm. What was he doing again?

Oh, right. Moving out of the way so the ghost could see Kisame, who had wisely kept his mouth shut throughout the conversation. Taking a deep breath, Itachi signaled to Kisame with a jerk of his head that he was going to move, then slowly stepped to the side again. The last thing that stayed between Kisame and his father's ghost was the blade of the silver knife, then Itachi drew that back too, leaving the way between them clear.

"Kisame…" the ghost murmured almost reverently. "My son… you've come home…"

The ghost moved forward slowly, as if unsteady on his feet, then suddenly closed the distance between himself and Kisame and enveloped him in a hug of spectral energy.

Itachi heard the catch in Kisame's voice when he felt it too; not that he would feel the energy in the same way as Itachi would, but he would definitely feel the hair-raising chill of being enveloped by something not supposed to exist in this world.

"D-Dad!? Is that really you?"

"Kisame," the ghost murmured in a completely different tone from what he'd spoken to Itachi in. "You've finally come home! I waited for you for so long, but I always knew that you'd come back before I… before I…" his tone abruptly shifted, turning darker and more angry as his memories of his last moments alive were at last unearthed. "I… I died? I fucking _died!?_ Of all the things to kill me, it was a fucking eat in the middle of the night?! I'm going to murder those fuckers!"

"Kisame, you need to back away right now!" Itachi ordered, stepping in closer with his knife, but this time the presence of the silver didn't act as a deterrent to the now-raving ghost.

Kisame's breaths started coming hard and fast. "I thought you said not to move!"

"Change of plans! Get the hell out of there!"

"But-"

"MOVE!"

That propelled Kisame out of the way and behind Itachi once more, but not for long, as the ghost became away of his son's disappearance and started to emit a wave of red-hot anger.

"WHY DO YOU TAKE HIM FROM ME?! ME, HIS OWN FATHER!? YOU'RE JUST LIKE THAT LITTLE BITCH OF A CHILD WHO TOOK HIM FROM ME THE FIRST TIME!"

Itachi had had to face a lot of insults that day, and right then and there, he decided he couldn't take it anymore. "I AM NOT A LITTLE BITCH OF A CHILD!" He raised the knife and prepared to launch himself at the ghost. "GO TO HELL, YOU STUPID FUCKING-"

"Itachi!" Kisame caught Itachi around the waist, preventing him from taking a flying leap forward with the knife raised to stab. "Did he say that? Those exact words?"

Itachi was so angry, it took a few seconds for the sound of Kisame's voice to make it past the rushing of blood in his veins. "Wh… what?"

"What you just said? The 'little bitch of a child'? Did he say those exact words, in reference to someone taking me from him?"

"I… yes?"

"Then listen up, old man," Kisame announced, turning approximately toward the form of the ghost. "That 'little bitch of a child'? She was my sister. Your daughter, in case you need reminding. And yeah, I said was, because she's dead now, and has been for several years. You never even knew, did you? That your own daughter was dead because _you_ chased her away from home? Didn't think so."

Kisame's words must have struck home, because the ghost stopped his manic screaming and looked at them. "Button? Button is… dead?"

"He's asking if Button is dead," Itachi surreptitiously relayed.

"You lost the right to call her that years ago," Kisame said, his tone almost as cold as the unnatural chill that was starting to overtake the room. "She was _my_ Button; she was _your_ regret."

That stunned the ghost enough that he was silent for almost a minute, then he shook it off and started pushing waves of hatred off his body once more. "It doesn't matter anymore. If she's dead, she's dead, and there's nothing I can do about it. My purpose now is to find the fuckers who took a cheap shot at me in the dark and give them the end they deserve."

"But is that really the best plan?" Itachi interjected, taking Kisame's place on the argument train since he couldn't hear what was being said. "Cheap revenge? Is that all you're good for? Why don't you go where you were supposed to go, and let us enact vengeance for you?"

The ghost let out a hiss of displeasure. "Vengeance, revenge; what is the difference?!"

"Let me explain it to you logically." Itachi took both of his hands, one of them still holding the silver knife, and spread them apart, palm up. "Revenge is an empty hand, closing around a throat to squeeze the life out of it."

"That sounds perfect to me," the ghost sneered, but Itachi shook his head.

"Just keep listening. Now, revenge is your motive, and the extent of what you can accomplish. It is an emotion-based response, often without thought. Vengeance, on the other hand, is like this hand here, with the knife." He raised it slightly for emphasis. "A blade can do much more damage than an empty hand, and it has much more potential in the kinds of pain it can inflict. Vengeance, as opposed to revenge, is cold and well thought out, delivering the maximum penance to those who have wronged you. While revenge feels good while you're doing it, the vengeance you take will make you satisfied for the rest of your life."

"What are you saying?" The ghost asked suspiciously, his energy roiling around him in confused waves, as if it wasn't sure whether it wanted to implode in on itself or explode and kill everyone within a mile radius.

Itachi took a deep breath; he hoped this would work. "Let us take your vengeance for you. Let us track down the ones who killed you and make them pay. You can see them on the other side and get your revenge there, but let us take your vengeance here, in the realm of the living. As you so aptly put earlier, if you're dead, you're dead, and there's nothing you or we can do about it. So let us do it for you."

"You think I'd leave so important a task to an unknown little pet like you?" The ghost sneered.

"No," Itachi admitted, "But would you leave it to your son?"

Again the words, gave the ghost pause, and he turned as if to consider Kisame. "My son, my Kisame… would you really take my revenge for me? Would you finally take over your old man's job so he can get some rest?"

Again, Itachi quietly translated out of the corner of his mouth. "He wants to know if you would really do it."

"Of course I would, Dad!" Kisame stepped out from behind Itachi to stand next to him, steel in his voice. "We may have had our differences, but we are family. I will find your killers and make them pay, I promise, and then take care of the family you left behind in my care. I swear it."

"Ah…" the ghost sighed, his energy starting to swirl in a gentler pattern now. "It's been so long since you called our little group here a family… I'm so… happy…"

The edges of the ghost's energy started to flake away into nothingness, and Itachi felt a surge of relief go through his chest. _Yes!_ They had done it; they had convinced the pre-wraith to fade before it could wreak any havoc in world of the living! One more question occurred to him, however, and he stepped forward again.

"Wait! Can you tell us anything that might help us find your killers?"

"It was dark… I couldn't see…" came the reply, becoming fainter with every word. "But I can tell you this much: It was Lock. Be wary of Lock. Their greed knows no bounds when it comes to our resources."

Itachi had to hide a sigh of exasperation; they already knew Lock was likely to have been behind the attack, at that they coveted the territory Kisame's gang controlled. "Anything else? Anything at all?"

"Just… one more… thing…" The ghost heaved a sigh. "The man who killed me… lives inside these walls. You have a traitor in your midst. Be careful. Trust… no one…"

Then the sound of his voice faded along with the energy that was making the room feel oppressive, and it warmed up several degrees. Itachi felt Kisame flinch next to him, then bring a hand up to hide his eyes.

"The light came back on. Does that mean… he's gone?"

"Yes, he's gone now. He went where he was supposed to go."

"Ha." Kisame snorted. "I know that line is supposed to make me feel better, but it's not like I ever really cared for my father in the first place. I'm glad he's gone and I… don't have to… deal with him… anymore…"

Kisame's voice broke, and Itachi reached up to wipe away the tears from his cheeks that he knew were falling, though he couldn't see them. "It's okay to miss him, Kisame."

"I hated him for so long!" The words exploded out of Kisame, along with a great deal of snot that Itachi dutifully wiped away with a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket. "I shouldn't be sad that he's gone! I should be happy that… I … I…"

"Kisame." Itachi reached up and wrapped his arms around his neck. "You don't have to be afraid to cry. He was your father."

As if that opened up the floodgates of a dam, tears poured from Kisame's eyes and he sobbed into Itachi, clutching him to his massive torso. The embrace was too tight to be comfortable, but Itachi gritted his teeth and bore it, patting Kisame on the back and whispering soothing nothings in his ear as he sobbed himself out. After he was spent and nothing else would come, he loosened his grip, allowing Itachi the air to breathe properly for the first time in almost seven minutes.

"Thank you for that," he said gruffly, as if it could disguise the tears still lingering in his voice (which it didn't).

"Don't mention it," Itachi relied, though his voice was a little higher pitched than normal. He rubbed his sore ribs and pushed his shoulders back to minimize the effect of the bone-crushing hug. "You good now?"

"Yeah, I'm good. I just needed… well, I guess I was surprised that I actually got the chance to say goodbye. I wasn't expecting it, and it kind of… bowled me over."

"I've seen worse reactions; don't worry," Itachi murmured. He held out the silver blade to Kisame, hilt first. "Here; you can have this back. Hopefully I won't need it again."

"Here's to that." Kisame took the blade and tucked it away somewhere, probably in a belt loop. "So, that's it? Do we have to do anything else? Spectral decontamination or something?"

"No, but we _do_ have to take care of our own mess." Itachi jerked his head at the ring of salt that lined the room. "Go get a broom. We need to sweep this up before anyone else finds it."

" _Sweep?_ " Kisame stood aghast. "We have to do _chores_? Can't I just like, tell the cleaning lady to do it?"

Itachi placed a hand in the center of Kisame's chest and pushed. "Nope, we need to clean it ourselves. We don't want anyone else getting suspicious. Come on, scat. Get me a broom."

"I don't suppose you're going to be doing any of this sweeping, now are you?" Kisame sighed as he moved to the door.

"Of course not. I'm blind, remember? We want this floor to be actually _clean_. Now skedaddle. I'll be waiting until you get back."

"Of course you will be," Kisame sighed as he opened the door and slipped through, but there was an indulgent laughter in his voice that Itachi had to smile at.

He'd done it. He'd successfully beaten back his own demons and subdued a ghost similar to the one who had driven him mad.

Now if only getting the rest of the gang to trust him and Kisame at the same time as finding out who the traitor was would be just as easy.

* * *

Shikamaru slipped through the window of a familiar Seattle apartment, shadows tailing after him and hiding his aura from all but the most keen-eyed of observers. Like he'd promised Neji, he'd gone down to Oregon for a few days to check up on a few old friends and see if they were dead yet or not. Of the three he'd tried to track down, one, he found out, had died in the war a few weeks after him but had not become a ghost, one had committed suicide at the age of sixty-four after getting back safely from the war and again, hadn't stuck around after the fact, or if he had, hadn't stayed for long, and the last one was still alive, but a doddering and slobbering mess of an old man in a nursing home. Shikamaru had quickly left after locating him; he wanted to remember the man he had known, not this broken shell that was all that remained.

His amusement cut shorter than he had anticipated, Shikamaru had been forced to occupy himself with other distractions until the time he had agreed to come back to Seattle and Neji. His upper lips curled upwards into a smile as he remembered some of those distractions; he couldn't wait to show Neji what he had been doing.

Grinning rather insufferably, Shikamaru settled down on the bed in a lounging position, waiting for Neji to notice him. As the seconds ticked by and no exuberant young man came bursting through the door, however, that grin came to be replaced by a frown. Had Neji not missed him as much as he'd anticipated? Impossible. But why hadn't he come looking for him yet? He had to know he was here, especially if he was in the apartment-

Shikamaru cut his thoughts off with a curse and floated to the bedroom door, passing through it to look at the room beyond. No Neji. He expanded his range of senses to the whole apartment, and still found no sign of the young man. With another mental curse, he realized that the apartment felt empty as well, devoid of energy, like it hadn't been occupied in at least a day, and the bed, he discovered when he floated back through the bedroom door, looked like it hadn't been slept in the night before.

Gritting his teeth in annoyance, Shikamaru cast his eyes around the room for some clue as to why Neji wasn't there to greet him. Had he been detained by the so-called "elders" he had gone to see and had been so worried about meeting? Or had he left purposefully so he wouldn't see Shikamaru? The phantom quickly squashed that idea down; he didn't want to even consider it, and besides, Neji's personality wasn't the kind to do something like that anyway.

And no, the Konoha incident didn't count. Even though it was the same exact thing. Because it wasn't the same exact thing. Damn it.

As these thoughts started racing around his brain, Shikamaru suddenly found his eyes alighting on the chessboard on the table next to Neji's bed. It was his board, and not where he'd left it, under the bed. Additionally, only a of the few pieces had been set up, as if whoever had left it there had been in a rush, including both kings, a bishop of either side, a white knight, a black rook, and a few pawns. What caught his eye most, however, was the slip of paper sticking out from under the base of the white king.

His interest piqued, Shikamaru floated over to the chessboard and called the piece of paper out from under the king without disturbing the rest of the board. The words were written in a gentle looping script Shikamaru instantly recognized as Neji's, despite never having seen it before.

 _S~_

 _I'm in New York for work. It was important and I had to leave as soon as I could. I don't know when I'll be back; it may be a few days, maybe a week. I think it would be for the best if you didn't follow me._

 _Neji H._

 _P.S. The elders got wind of that little stunt you pulled a few days ago. PLEASE be careful of where you go and what you do from now on, or they_ will _catch you. I'm serious._

Shikamaru sighed and let the note float in front of his face. He had really been looking forward to seeing Neji again and showing off the skills he'd been practicing while he was away, but it looked like they had been pushed even further back now. _Well, at least I'll have more time to perfect it_ , the logical part of his mind supplied, but for once, Shikamaru wasn't interested in listening to it. He sighed again and shoved his hands in his pockets, considering what he could do for the next week.

 _Well, I could always go for another trip_ , he considered. _There's someone in Texas I've been meaning to track down… but what if Neji comes back to Seattle before I do? Then I'll miss out on time with him, and I want to do it as soon as possible…. Maybe I could stay around here… nah, that's probably too dangerous… I'd like to follow him, but he asked me not too… then again, when have I ever listened to what he says…?_

As this dialogue was running through his head, the note flipped lazily in front of Shikamaru's nose in a draft, flashing to his attention another few words written on the bottom right-hand corner of the piece of paper that he hadn't noticed before. Words that caused his eyes to widen and his breath to catch, and if his heart possessed the ability to pump, it might have skipped a beat.

 _P. P. S._

 _Miss you._

Shikamaru instantly straightened up and folded the note back into a small square, putting it securely in his pocket. There was no way in Hell he was letting Neji have an entire week by himself after reading that. He mentally fixed his target in his mind, then let shadows swirl around his body and sank down into them, leaving the room untouched with the exception of the white king moved a square to the side and the note previously hidden underneath it gone. It was time to find his fairy-boy.


	20. Repent Our Mistakes

Woot! Another chapter! Thanks for both my lovely reviews from last week- they really made my day!

Warning for a lemon at the end of this chapter. Finally living up to the M rating, aren't I?

Addi out!

* * *

Neji stood still in the center of the busy New York City airport, letting the endless crowd of people swirl around him like the sides of a cyclone around its calm eye. He glanced down at his phone, waiting for a message to pop up and annoyed that nothing was forthcoming. His upper lip curled upwards; Sasuke's plane should have gotten there before his, so he should be here already, waiting for Neji, not the other way around. He checked the service on his phone; he had three bars, so there was no chance of a message getting lost. Where was he?

A hand landed on his shoulder suddenly, shocking him out of his thoughts. When turned around to give his aggressor a glare, he was surprised to find Sasuke standing there with a goofy grin on his face.

"I called your name like three times, Neji! You got cotton in your ears or something?"

"Something like that," Neji agreed tersely, slipping his phone in his pocket. "Are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be." The grin on Sasuke's face slipped somewhat. "Let's get this over with."

"I agree."

They headed out of the airport together, and Neji waved down a taxi as soon as they reached the front gate. The taxi driver offered to take both of their suitcases and stash them in the trunk for them, but both Neji and Sasuke refused, leaving the driver somewhat flummoxed, but he just shrugged and mutter something about the tight squeeze in the backseat being their problem. When they had gotten inside the taxi and settled, Neji gave the driver the address of the hotel he had booked for the next week, and the driver punched it into his GPS. A line flowed out from where they were to the hotel, along with a charge counter that started counting up as soon as they started moving.

"I can't believe you already booked a hotel room," Sasuke said quietly to him so the driver wouldn't overhear. "I barely had time to pack and jump on a plane after you called me. How did you manage to convince your family to get it approved for me to come too, by the way?"

"Don't underestimate the influence I hold as the Seattle File Operator," Neji said back in the same quiet voice. "The Hyuuga elders listen to what I say, even if they don't always take my advice." He hoped that those last words weren't bitter enough that Sasuke would pick up on it, but the chance was very small.

Still, Sasuke didn't remark on it, just settled more comfortably into the uncomfortable taxi seat. At least they'd managed to snag one that looked like it hadn't been vomited in for a while. "So, what's our plan for tonight? Sleep, then start tomorrow?"

"It's already morning," Neji pointed out, inclining his head to the glowing 3:28 on the dashboard of the taxi. "I slept on the plane. We might as well start now."

"Now?!" Sasuke's mouth dropped open. "But it's three in the morning!"

"And thus will be less crowded."

"But what about jet lag? Isn't it like, midnight your time? Aren't you tired?"

"Again, I slept on the plane. And the time difference is only more reason to start now. If I go to sleep now, I'll likely not wake up for some time. I have the stamina to start, so I will start. Your powers aren't needed now anyways, so I can start without you."

"No, no, I'll come with you," Sasuke quickly interjected, flicking a suspicious look at the taxi driver, who had started to pay more attention to the two in his backseat after Neji's offhand mention of "powers". "I won't leave you without backup, not is a situation like this. I'll come with."

"Excellent." Neji nodded to himself. "Then prepare yourself. We have a long day ahead of ourselves."

Forty-five minutes later, Neji and Sasuke made their way out of the entrance of the hotel they were staying at, having paid the taxi, checked in, dropped off their luggage, and successfully staved off sleep at the sight of two very comfortable-looking beds. Neji flipped the collar of his jacket down as they started walking down the sidewalk, shrugging his shoulders to make himself more comfortable in the heavy garment couple with the heat. In juxtaposition to him, Sasuke had changed into a pair of shorts and a causal shirt with a sweatshirt thrown over the top to combat the chill of the early - very early - morning air that would soon be replaced by the oppressive heat of a city in summer without the blanket of clouds that covered Seattle. Neji didn't mind his extra clothes, though; he'd had too many experiences without them the past few days to be entirely comfortable dressing as casually as Sasuke was.

"Where to first, Captain?" Sasuke asked, shoving his hands into his pockets and deliberately slouching his back.

Ignoring his deliberate bad posture, Neji straightened his back and considered for a moment. "Somewhere high, I think. So I can look over the city."

"Empire State Building?" Sasuke immediately suggested, but Neji shook his head.

"Too many people around. Besides, don't they close at night?"

"I dunno, I always thought they were open at night. People take nighttime pictures from up there, don't they?"

"But at 4 am?" Neji sighed. "Regardless, it's still too crowded. I need somewhere there's no chance someone will come across me when I'm working."

"I thought that was what I was for," Sasuke protested.

"Sure, I guess. But even you can't get rid of four hundred people all trying to snap photos of the man with the glowing white eyes." Neji suddenly had an idea and stopped short on the sidewalk, causing Sasuke to walk into his back with an undignified yelp. "Hold up, I have an idea. Give me a second."

"What is it?" Sasuke, but Neji ignored him, pulling his phone out of his pocket and searching through his email contacts until he found labeled as the File Operator for New York City, then sent him a quick message. Less than a minute later, he received a message back with the information he'd requested. After sending back a quick thanks, he held his phone up so Sasuke could see.

"See how easy that was? Sometimes it pays to go at things with a little bit of organization and optimize your resources, huh, Uchiha?"

"Yeah, yeah, rub it in," Sasuke muttered, flipping up the hood of his sweatshirt so he could hide beneath the cowl. "Let's just get a move on, shall we?"

Fifteen minutes later, Neji and Sasuke were standing outside of a business-like building in the heart of the city that stretched far up into the sky; not as high as some of other, more famous skyscrapers, but higher than all its immediate neighbors. Sasuke scoffed and scuffed the heel of his shoe on the sidewalk when he saw it.

"Are you sure this is the right place? Doesn't look _deserted enough_ to me; what about you?"

Neji ignored his comment and pushed the door open, leaving Sasuke to scramble along in his wake. The inside of the lobby was dimly lit and unoccupied, but not locked up, so Neji made his way to the elevator and hit the button to go up. Less than a second later, the doors opened with a ding, and Neji smiled to himself as he got in the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor, the doors almost closing on Sasuke before he could make it through. This was the perk of doing things at 4 am.

"What the Hell, Neji? Are you _trying_ to leave me behind?" Sasuke panted, but Neji, again, ignored him and glanced down at his phone.

The directions he'd been given told him to go through the door of the first office on the right once he got to the top floor, and there would be a secretary there - despite the ungodly hour of morning - who would recognize his eyes and allow him through to the room behind the office, where he would find a set of stairs that would lead up to a deserted rooftop where he could use his Byakugan in peace without the pressure of being found.

It was so nice to know that he could always count on the organization and obsessive pre-planning of the Hyuuga to get him where he needing to go.

They stood in stony silence for the rest of the elevator ride until they came to the top floor, and the elevator doors dinged once more, letting them off into a long hallway with doors lining each side. His step confident, Neji led Sasuke to the correct door and pushed it open to see a young woman with the same dark dark hair and pale eyes as Neji sitting behind a desk and trying not to fall asleep.

"Office is closed," she said mechanically without looking up at them. "Come back during our normal business hours: nine to six on weekdays, and ten to four on Saturdays-"

"Excuse me," Neji interrupted her. "But we're not here to see your employer. I'd like to take a look at the roof, if you don't mind."

The woman's gaze snapped up at his words, then her eyes narrowed as they raked over his appearance before she nodded sharply and thrust a clipboard at him. "Just sign here, then, and I'll show you the way."

"Excellent." Neji wrote his name on the bottom of the list of people who had accessed the roof during the past week, then straightened back up to follow the woman. When Sasuke stepped in line behind him, however, the woman shook her head sharply.

"No. Just him. No unauthorized persons on the roof."

"He's my guest," Neji protested, but the woman held firm.

"Sorry. Rules are rules."

"I'm an Uchiha," Sasuke announced. "Does that make a difference."

The woman's eyes narrowed. "It does if you can prove it. I have no way of determining an Uchiha by sight like I do a Hyuuga, so unless you've got some kind of ID on you, you can't go with him."

Sasuke fished in his pocket and drew out his wallet, then extended a plastic ID toward the woman. "This work for you?"

She eyed it suspiciously for a minute, then sighed and thrust the clipboard at him as well. "I suppose it does. Sign here."

It only took a few seconds for Sasuke to write his name with a flourish underneath Neji's, then he passed her back the clipboard with a cheeky grin and she placed it on her desk before opening up the door to the inner office and leading them inside. Once through, she opened another door, one that almost blended into the wall, and ushered them inside. Unlike the bright, white-walled office they had just been in, this door led to a dimly lit hallway with dark walls and a stairway made of metal grating leading upward that looked like it was left over from the original scaffolding of the building.

"Follow these stairs, and you'll reach the top," the woman instructed them before turning back around. A thought visibly occurred to her just as she was about to close the door, though, and she turned back to the pair. "Oh, and please try not to fall or jump off the top. The paperwork is such a hassle."

Then she closed the door in their faces, leaving them alone in the dimly lit hallway.

Sasuke snorted and stepped back to allow Neji to go first. "Well, isn't she just a ball of sunshine. Ladies first."

Neji sent Sasuke a glare but took the proffered first spot, climbing up the rickety stairs with as little contact with the grease-stained handrail as possible. After a good twenty or thirty stairs, they finally reached another door, which Neji opened to reveal the crisp air of early morning high in the sky, hovering above a city full of heavy pollution and constant light.

The juxtaposition was beautiful, Neji couldn't help but think.

Though it was still dark, the eastern horizon just barely starting to lighten, when Neji stepped out of the doorway and looked up, he couldn't see any stars. Now that he was out of the minimal protection offered by the lee of the threshold, the wind whipped around him and through him, swirling his hair around his face like a messy cyclone. Once he stood in the center of the roof, he turned to remark something to Sasuke, only to find him still back at the door, clutching the sides of the doorway with white-knuckled fingers.

"What's the matter, Sasuke?" Neji called, a frown creasing the skin between his eyebrows.

"Everything's fine!" Sasuke called back, but Neji noticed that there was a note of panic in his voice. "I- I think I'll just stay back here and let you do your thing in piece, is all."

Neji's frown deepened. "Are you sure that's all it is?"

"Yes! Absolutely!" Sasuke's voice jumped almost a full octave during his assurance when a particularly strong gust of wind sent a nearby railing creaking, and a grin spread across Neji's face when he realized what the problem was.

"Sasuke, you're afraid of heights!"

His eyes growing wide with alarm, Sasuke squeaked, "I am _not_ afraid of heights; I am afraid of _falling_! There is a big difference!"

"Whatever you say," Neji laughed, turning back to the cityscape in front of him with a rueful shake of his head. He made his way to the nearest railing and leaned over the railing to look down at the streets below him, the tiny cars crawling along like marching ants and lights from the buildings below like so many fireflies. It was a city of insects, he mused as he pulled his hair back from his face and bundled it tighter into the band, keeping it from flying into his eyes; he would need their full capacity for this.

It really was a perfect lookout station. He would have to look into manufacturing one for Seattle. That would make his job so much easier.

Taking a deep breath, Neji lifted his face up to the sky and allowed his eyes to drift shut, gathering energy in his core in preparation for the hunt. The power swirled inside him until the pressure it put on his stomach made him want to lean over the railing again and throw up the little he'd managed to stomach before going on the plane, but he held firm until every scrap of power that resided in his body was caught in a singular location, then he lifted his arms up to the sky with a shout.

"Byakugan!"

A white glow flared behind his closed eyelids, illuminating lines of power on his face in glowing script that only intensified when he allowed his eyes to flutter open and gazed about him with eyes of pure white. No pupil or iris marred the impressive colorless expansive, making it a mystery how they could be so perceptive in their vision, relaying to Neji's brain colors and shades unknowable to the unreceptive eye.

Colors of emotion swirled around different parts of the city, layering the air in swaths of hazy fog as thick as the pollution from the tailpipes of thousands of idling cars. Here, in the corporate sector, the overpowering color was a vortex of sickly green: greed and jealousy. There, down in the alleyways, was the dark muddled greys, almost blacks, of desperation and abject despair; elsewhere, ambivalence overpowered a few streets in a frozen shade of grayish blue, worry hijacked a building in tones of shimmering dusty red, heartache downed a bridge in blue from the people who had jump from it, and panicked hurry infused the entrance to a subway with dark fuchsia tones.

New York really was a desolate city, Neji realized as he gazed down upon it. It put the layers of emotion in Seattle to shame. There was something to be said about the most notorious city in the country- notorious for reasons both good and bad.

But, as interesting as these layers of colored emotion that lay over the city like so many layers of smog were, they weren't what Neji was here to see, so he closed his eyes briefly to rid himself of the vision and then reopened them with a different intention in mind. Carefully delving under the layers of emotion, Neji allowed his senses to explore the more sedentary layers of spectral energy clinging tightly to the buildings and streets like a covering of grease or ooze. Like the colors of emotion, the spectral energy had different colors it could take on as well, depending on the most prevalent kind of ghost in the area, but the colors were less brilliant as those for emotion and thus harder to find. Concentrating as hard as he could, Neji narrowed his eyes and swept his gaze around the city, taking note of every color he saw and dismissing them just as quickly when they weren't what he was looking for.

The auras of wraiths, unique among all other ghosts, were thick and black, like treacle or tar, and stuck to the places they'd been to for long after they'd left. His nostril flaring as if he could scent the trail of the wraiths as well as see it with his eyes, Neji searched until he found a smudge of black on a floor high in a skyscraper not too far from the one he was standing on, in the corporate sector. Instantly zeroing in on it, he distinguished the fainter end of the smudge from the darker one, then traced it through the city as it leapt from building to building, street to street, carefully hidden at all times but getting steadily darker. The slimy trail, like that left behind from the passage of a slug or snail, traversed the city in a series of spirals, first carving out a section with a circle and then traveling steadily inwards with smaller circles, as if whoever had made it was looking for something and willing to scour the whole city to find it.

That thought was disconcerting enough on its own.

Narrowing his eyes even further, Neji followed the trail as quickly as he could, jumping from spiral to spiral until the black smudges on the ground were dark enough that he was reasonable sure they had been made within the past twenty-four hours. His eyes quickly traced the rest of the trail until it stopped at the entrance of a building about twenty-five blocks west of the one Neji was standing on top of. It was inside of an incomplete spiral, but not centered in it, so Neji knew they wouldn't be leaving the area for awhile- at least until they completed the spiral. With a nod, Neji noted the buildings on the outside of the spiral for reference, then allowed his Byakugan to fade, his eyes losing their ethereal qualities and taking on their normal appearances once more.

He almost staggered when he tried to take a step and had to grip the railing with both hands to avoid falling. His breath hissing out from between clenched teeth, Neji got his feet back underneath him and carefully tested their weight-carrying capacity before letting them take the brunt of his body once more. He always forgot how exhausted using that aspect of his power made him, especially for as long as he had. It was hard to count the passage of time when he was lost in the world of spectral energy and colorful emotions, but it might have been a half an hour, perhaps even an hour, since he'd first stepped out on the roof, especially if one took into account the eastern horizon, which was bleeding through with blue and other colors that spoke of dawn approaching.

Neji turned back to tell Sasuke what he had discovered, only to find him sitting in the doorway where he had left him instead of standing, his head tilted to the side and resting on the door frame, his eyes closed and his jaw slack. He really must have been tired, Morgan figured as he strode back to the doorway and gently shook him awake with a hand on his shoulder. Perhaps a little sleep would do them both good, especially considering the amount of power he'd just used, and for so long.

Sasuke awoke with a yawn and bleary eyes, and Neji held a hand out to him that he gratefully took. Together, they descended back down from the roof, shutting the door behind them in the face of the rising sun. They'd done enough work for one morning.

* * *

When Itachi and Kisame emerged from their respective rooms the next morning, much later then they had the previous day, the very air in the house seemed cleaner. The sunlight filtered more brightly - or more warmly, in Itachi's case - through the windows, and the people who passed them in the hallways were more polite and cheerful. As they ate a well-prepared breakfast, Kisame remarked on the change.

"Does it seem nicer here this morning to you too, or is it just me?"

"It's not just you." Itachi carefully took a mouthful of toast coated with a very fragrant strawberry jam - which he'd been allowed to spread on the bread himself, hallelujah - and leaned a little closer to Kisame so his words wouldn't be as easily overheard. "It's because of what we did last night- and I'm not just talking about the meeting."

"Ahhh…" The subtle mean behind Itachi's comment audibly clicked in Kisame's head. "A ghost can do that?"

"If it's strong enough, yeah. Someone like… well, Button wouldn't have that kind of effect just because of the kind of ghost she was, but your father was headed down the road to being a nasty one. We're lucky we got him to fade when we did."

"So about that fading business…" Kisame took a swig of his coffee. "Think you could explain it a little better for me? I mean, I think I understand the gist of it, but I don't really get everything, you know?"

"Hmmm… I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you," Itachi replied in a completely deadpan voice, causing Kisame to spit out some of his coffee and start coughing as he tried to hold in his laughter.

"You'd have to kill me?! What were the people from your family, and bunch of spies?!"

"Something like that." Itachi took another bite of his toast while keeping his face black.

"What are you two doing in here?" Miru's rang out from behind them, propelling both Kisame and Itachi into fit - another, in Kisame's case - of laughter.

"I'll tell you when we figure it out!" Kisame said when he calmed down enough to speak. "Anyway, what's up? You need something?"

"No, I just thought I'd give you a head's up on what's happening today." Miru sat down on the other side of Kisame, and Itachi turned assumedly back to his toast as they continued to talk. "Raiga's going to visit the hospital soon, so I thought I'd let you know."

"The hospital?" Kisame leaned toward her. "To visit Ranmaru?"

"How did you know-? Nevermind," Miru cut herself off with a shake of her head. "Nothing ever gets past you, does it, Itachi?"

Itachi only smiled in response and saluted her with his toast.

"Anyway, I just thought it would be a good chance to get Raiga on your side. Not that he doesn't support you already, but he's a wild card, so it's best to err on the side of caution with him. If you get my drift."

"I do," Kisame replied with a slight incline of his head.

"Excellent. I'll leave you to your breakfast, then, and tell him to pop by when he's about to leave." Miru stood up and walked to the door, then turned around right before exiting. "Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. Fuguki suggested something to me last night that I thought I might relay to you so you can think on it before our next meeting tomorrow morning. He thought it might be a good idea to have a meeting with some of the other Bosses in the area to let them know we have a new Boss and that we're in the process of changing our name back to the original. It's risky, but we might impress them. It's up to you."

Kisame scratched his chin in thought. "I'll think over it before the meeting. Thank you, Miru. I'm glad you brought this to my attention. That was good thinking on your part."

A glow of pride, though restrained, entered her voice. "You're welcome, Boss."

Then the door snicked closed behind her, leaving the pair in silence with their breakfast. After waiting a few seconds to ensure that Miru had gotten far enough away from the door that she couldn't hear them, Kisame asked, "Did she just do what I think she just did?"

"Call you by a term of respect in private _and_ inform you of a plan told to her in confidence by someone who opposes your leadership almost outspokenly? Yes, by God, she did."

"And does that mean what I think it means?"

"Yes, it does." Itachi felt a grin spread across face. "We officially have one ally inside these walls."

* * *

Neji stood at the window of the hotel room that he and Sasuke were sharing, peering safely down at the street below him from behind the obstruction of the curtain. Behind him, Sasuke snored softly on one of the beds, completely dead to the world. Neji had to wonder if he'd gotten any sleep before they'd met up, or if he'd stayed up all night before. Either way, he was dead to the world now, and Neji wasn't about to wake him up. He needed Sasuke in top shape if they were going to pull off the plan he had in mind.

Of course, that went for him as well, but for some reason, despite how exhausted he was and how much energy his early-morning escapades had used up, Neji found that his body was refusing to allow himself to sleep. His eyes, which should have been burning with tiredness by now, were alert and watchful. Perhaps, he mused as he scanned the street below and the swarms of people and cars making their way through streets too narrow for their purpose, it was a kind of defense mechanism, preventing him from putting himself in a vulnerable position while he had just used his power to track such a dangerous group of beings.

Sasuke rolled over and grunted on the bed behind him, and Neji sighed. It looked like his companion was going to be out for a while, so he might as well get some work done while he could, since it appeared that he couldn't take a nap. Pulling out his phone, he sat down at the table and started going through the emails that had been piling up since his mad dash back to the Hyuuga compound the afternoon before. It wasn't much, but it was enough to keep him occupied for several hours.

Unfortunately, not as long as Sasuke planned to sleep. With a sigh, Neji stood from his spot at the table and stretched to ease his limbs, which were cramped from sitting in the same position for so long, then shrugged off his jacket and hung it up by the door. Perhaps, he mused, a shower might calm him down a little bit and convince his overtired body to sleep.

As he stood underneath the warm water in the unfamiliar shower in the unfamiliar bathroom, lathering up his hair with unfamiliar shampoo that had an unfamiliar scent, Neji decided that the shower was not helping his nerves- but it did give his tired muscles a massage that he hadn't known he'd needed, so there was a silver lining to his misery. Grimacing at his sore arms - which didn't make any sense; it wasn't like he'd done any heavy lifting recently, but sometimes the Byakugan did strange things to the body if it was used for too long - Neji pushed his hair over his shoulder and got out of the shower, quickly toweling himself off with an unfamiliar fluffy hotel towel before wrapping the towel around his waist and setting out to brush his hair with an unfamiliar brush he found sitting on the bathroom sink next to the free shampoo he'd used earlier.

His face looked pale and sickly to him as he looked at his reflection in the mirror. Curling his upper lip in distaste, Neji leaned forward to look at his reflection more closely. Were those dark circles under his eyes?

"Yes, they are," a very _not_ unfamiliar voice answered the question he hadn't realized he'd uttered aloud close to his ear, causing Neji to almost jump out of his towel and turn around to glare at the owner of the voice.

"I thought I told you not to follow me!" He hissed, clutching the top of his towel and pulling it a little higher just in case in the face of Shikamaru's smug smile.

"Yes, you did," Shikamaru grinned, brushing a half-dried lock of hair back from Neji's bare shoulder. "And I didn't listen."

"But this is dangerous! I'm here for work! We're hunting _wraiths_!"

"What, the same wraiths I held my own against back in Konoha? You're going to need a better excuse than that, Neji."

"And… and… Sasuke is right through that door! What if he wakes up and finds you here?"

Shikamaru only shrugged, then fished around in his breast pocket for something. "I'm keeping an eye on him. He won't wake up any time soon."

"That doesn't change-!"

"And did you really think I was going to let you leave me alone for a week after reading _this_?"

Suddenly, there was a piece of paper dangling in front of Neji's face, too close for him to make out any words. He leaned back and the words came into focus, particularly the tiny script in the bottom right hand corner.

 _P. P. S._

 _Miss you._

He knew he shouldn't have added that last note.

With a sigh, Neji pushed the note aside and fixed Shikamaru with a stern look. "Look, Shikamaru, I know I'm probably sending you mixed signals right now, but this isn't the best-"

But before he could get the rest of his sentence out, Shikamaru leaned forward and covered his mouth, a smirk dancing at the corners of his mouth. "I missed you too."

Neji's eyes widened; he pulled Shikamaru's hand away to admonish him, but his mouth was occupied otherwise before he could protest. Darkness invaded him through his open mouth, stealing his self-control away, and he found himself powerless to do anything but kiss Shikamaru back.

He wasn't sure when his eyes closed, but he felt Shikamaru's hand come up to rest on his cheek, tickling his lashes as they rested against his skin. The fabric of his tattered army jacket was rough against Neji's bare chest, but he reveled in the sensation, grasping the material in his hands like he would never let go. The kiss continued for an indeterminate amount of time, perhaps a minute, perhaps ten, before Shikamaru pulled back, and Neji let his eyes flutter open just in time to see his breathless grin.

"So you really did miss me," he whispered, tucking a few strands of hair that had fallen over Neji's eyes behind his ear.

Neji felt his hands grip Shikamaru's jacket tighter of their own accord, even as he tried to shake his head. "Shikamaru, I'm sorry, but-"

"Shh, shh…" Shikamaru cut him off with a finger at his lips, snaking an arm around his waist. "Stop talking."

Some serious mental arguing was needed to pry the fingers of one hand away from Shikamaru's jacket, but Neji managed it and batted away the finger away from his lips. "I'm serious, Shikamaru: you need to stop."

Thankfully, something in Neji's tone must have alerted Shikamaru that something wasn't quite right, and he stilled instantly. "Why? What's the problem? What happened, Neji?"

"The situation has… changed," Neji said after taking a deep breath. "I don't think… we should be around each other anymore."

Shikamaru's eyes narrowed. "Are you breaking up with me?"

"I wasn't aware that we were dating."

"Well, I had hoped that we had passed the friends with benifits stage."

"This isn't a joke, Shikamaru."

"I wasn't aware I was being funny." Shikamaru's hold around Neji's waist tightened. "At least tell me _why_ , Neji. What changed? God know it wasn't me; I haven't been around. What, then?"

Neji drew himself up defensively. "I don't think that's any of your business, now is it?"

"Ahhh." A knowing gleam crept into Shikamaru's eye. "It's got to do with your family, then? Your so-called 'elders'?"

"Drop it, Shikamaru," Neji growled, pushing him away and turning back to the mirror.

"No, I don't think I will." Suddenly, Neji found himself pushed up against the counter, a strong chest covered in rough material pressed firmly against his back. "Not until you give me a reason."

"Shikamaru-!"

"Do I have to tease it out of you?" Came Shikamaru's low voice in his ear, causing a shiver to run down his spine as he reached around and rested his hand on Neji's chest, passing a thumb over a nipple he hadn't ever realized was sensitive before.

Both Neji's breathing and heart rate escalated in tempo, but he managed to fight off the effects of Shikamaru's touch with little - okay, perhaps more than a little; perhaps a lot - effort. Glaring at the mirror, even though Shikamaru's reflection was invisible and he couldn't lock eyes with it, Neji pushed aside the hands grabbing him. "Get your hands off of me," he spat through gritted teeth.

"Make me," Shikamaru murmured, and then licked his earlobe.

That was the last straw for Neji's quickly depleting patience. With a snarl, he spun back around and pushed Shikamaru away with all his might, a little surprised when he felt solid skin against his hands and the ghost flew back several feet, landing on his ass on the floor. The towel wrapped around Neji's waist slipped a little downwards at the movement, and he yanked it back up and tightened it with a vicious tug as he towered over the man on the floor in front of him.

"You want to know? Fine! I'll tell you! My _betrothal_ was just moved up! Is that a juicy enough family secret for you?"

Neji supposed he could feel proud of the fact that he'd caused the rare shock etched across Shikamaru's features, but the knowledge didn't bring him any pleasure. "Weren't expecting that, were you?" He jeered, gesturing wildly around him. "That's right; I'm a _betrothed man_ ; have been since I was eleven years old! So that means that all of _this_ ," he gestured from himself to Shikamaru, then back to himself, "is immoral, unethical, and against the rules of my family. _That_ is what has been going through my head since the first time you kissed me, Shikamaru. And now, everything that I've been pushing to the side and avoiding has suddenly come crashing down into my lap. You see this mark?"

He lifted up the hair on his neck to show off the fading hickey Shikamaru had left there days before. "You should; you made it. It sparked a rather interesting discussion with my _Grandfather_ , you know, the leader of the Hyuuga family, that went a little something like this: 'that girl who made that? You need to let her go. You've got your _duties to the clan_ to consider.' My _duties_ that consist of marrying a cousin of mine from inside the family, all in the name of making the bloodline stronger. That's right, Shikamaru: I'm not even a person to them, I'm just a useless stud they can pair up as they please to produce what they view as the best next generation."

He let his hair fall back over the mark on his neck. "So, what do you have to say about _that_?"

An impassive expression dominated Shikamaru's face for several seconds, then a grin spread across his features. "Gotcha."

Neji's shoulders sagged as he realized they were still playing a game, that he'd danced right into Shikamaru's palms and done exactly what he'd wanted and expected, and he let his head fall forward, catching his forehead in the palm of his hand. He couldn't bear to look at Shikamaru anymore, so he spun around and leaned against the counter, his head lowered and shoulders hunched. At least now, he wouldn't even be able to catch a glimpse of his opponent's smug expression in the mirror.

"Fuck you," he whispered quietly.

Though he couldn't see his movements, Neji could hear Shikamaru stand and make his way toward him, laying his hands gently on his shoulders. "Was that an offer?" He said quietly in Neji's ear, his breath tickling the soft hairs that clung to his neck.

Neji's skin crawled with a shiver, but he was too mentally exhausted to throw the hands off. "Leave me alone, Shikamaru. You're an asshole. I hate you."

"Now, I know at least one of those things isn't true." Shikamaru let go of Neji's shoulders, only to lean back against the counter next to him with his hands shoved in his pockets, his head tilted slightly to the side. "If you didn't care about me even a little bit, you wouldn't be this upset about the prospect of never seeing me again."

Despite himself, Neji's upper lip began to curl. "So you admit to being an asshole?"

"I thought that went without saying." Shikamaru reached over and placed his palm on Neji's cheek, turning his face so he was forced to look him in the eye. "I'm being extremely selfish right now, Neji, and I will continue to be selfish. Because I hate losing."

Neji averted his eyes. "Maybe we should call a stop to whatever game we're playing, then."

"It's too late for that." Shikamaru leaned in closer. "We stopped playing games a while ago, Neji. Didn't you realize?"

Neji shook his head, still avoiding Shikamaru's gaze. "That's why you need to get out of here now, before my family finds out what we've been up to and hurts you."

"Didn't I make it clear, Neji?" Shikamaru leaned even further toward Neji, until he could feel the phantom's breath on his lips as he spoke. "I don't like losing, so I don't plan on losing you."

Neji tried to resist the magnetic draw of Shikamaru's mouth, he really did, but before he knew what he was doing he had closed the tiny gap that remained between them and pressed his lips to the ghost's. He felt warmer than usual, he thought distractedly as Shikamaru began to press back, slowly at first and then with more fervor; more solid, perhaps. His hand came up to hold the back of Neji's head and keep him from escaping, fingers tangling in the strands of almost-dry hair as he did so.

Though he knew he should pull back, that this was going against what he'd been trying to tell Shikamaru all this time, that Sasuke was asleep in the next room and that he was on a job, Neji couldn't bring himself to tear himself away from the phantom's warm - too warm - and solid - too solid - embrace. His arms shifted up to wrap around Shikamaru's neck, and then in one swift motion the phantom lifted him up and sat him down on the counter.

"Shi-!" Neji started to squeak at the unexpected jostling, but Shikamaru shut him up again with his tongue rolling into his mouth with the force of a natural disaster. Desperate for more contact, Neji futily yanked at the shoulders of Shikamaru's army jacket.

Realizing what Neji wanted with a low chuckle, Shikamaru dismissed both his jacket and his shirt, leaving his torso bare for Neji's hands to explore, which they did quickly and with purpose as Shikamaru's knee slipped between his legs, nudging them apart.

Neji had been right before. Shikamaru felt more solid than normal, and warmer. Almost like… like…

But he never finished the thought, because the knee Shikamaru had pressed between his legs suddenly brushed up against his swelling erection, taking his mind off everything other than the sensations coursing through his body. He arched his back, trying to push himself closer to Shikamaru, but the phantom only chuckled and moved away.

"Shikamaru!" Neji panted, the pitch of his voice like the whine of an overheated animal. "Don't- don't tease me!"

"I'm not planning on it," he replied with an extremely self-satisfied smile, sinking to his knees in front of the counter Neji was perched on and resting a hand on the inside of his knee. "May I?"

Neji hesitated for only a second before responding; after all, this was the perfect chance to stop what was happening like he'd intended to, but his body was too far gone now to give up. Somehow, without noticing, he'd become addicted to the feeling of Shikamaru's skin against his own. "Y-yes. Oh, God, yes- don't stop!"

The corner of the phantom's upper lip curled in amusement. "Your wish is my command, O Fairy King."

Before Neji could respond to the strange new nickname, Shikamaru leaned forward and distracted him by dragging his leg to the side and then placing a soft kiss directly on the inside of his knee. He whimpered at the sensation, and Shikamaru's eyes flashed up at the sound before a smirk took over his face. "So you're sensitive there, are you?"

Neji was barely able to gasp out some kind of agreement before Shikamaru's lips were back on the sensitive skin of his inner thigh, kissing a soft trail from the back of his knee upwards, pushing up the towel as he went and occasionally flicking his eyes upwards to gauge Neji's reaction. Just when Neji thought he'd reached his goal, however, he pulled back, gave Neji a positively evil look, and then pressed a kiss behind his other knee, repeating the entire process on the other side.

By the time Shikamaru had finished with his teasing, Neji was gripping the edge of the counter he was sitting on with white-knuckled abandon. Both of Shikamaru's hands lay, thick-fingered and clutching with almost desperate abandon, on Neji's thighs, and he rose up close to Neji's ear to whisper an order before falling back to his knees.

"Don't make a sound. You wouldn't want Sasuke to wake up, now would you?"

Neji slapped a hand over his mouth to muffle the groan that fought to escape at just the words themselves. How would he be able to show his face ever again if Sasuke found him like this?

"Are you sure he's asleep?" He hissed through his fingers, his cheeks quickly bypassing a delicate pink and turning a frightful shade of red.

"Mm-hmm." Shikamaru nodded and settled one hand on Neji's bare stomach, just above the place where the towel around his waist was knotted. "Do you trust me?"

Did he trust him? Of course; that answer was instantaneous. The bigger question was whether or not Neji had the strength to tell him no.

As it turned out, he didn't. Neji gave a single nod, his hand still clasped over his mouth, and Shikamaru leaned forward to press a kiss against his stomach, where his hand had been, before he took the towel knot in his teeth and slowly began to tug it aside, locking eyes with Neji and keeping the contact all the while. It came apart easily under his ministrations, too easily for as tight a knot as Neji had tied - he was probably using telekinesis to help him along. When it was completely undone, he grabbed one edge of the towel in his teeth and pulled it off to the side, then repeated the action on the other side, leaving Neji's skin bare to the open air.

Though he knew that the air in the bathroom was hot and humid from the shower he had just taken, it felt cold to Neji as it brushed up against his bare crotch because of how overheated his skin was. Shikamaru's corporeal breath teased him with puffs only slightly warmer than the air around him, his lips a feather's-breadth away from brushing up against Neji's skin and yet so tantalizing in their distance. He stuck out just the tip of his tongue and touched it ever so gently to the inside of Neji's thigh, causing him to jump and almost flinch away at the unexpected sensation, then started to draw swirling patterns on his skin with sticky spectral saliva that lingered for only a few seconds before evaporating into nothingness.

Up and around his thigh Shikamaru's tongue swirled, coming closer and closer to the place Neji wanted him to reach with every pass, yet somehow just missing it every time. Letting out a whine of frustration that was muffled by the hand he still kept securely over his mouth, Neji unconsciously squeezed his knees together, catching Shikamaru's head between his thighs in a tight grip. In response, Shikamaru pulled his tongue back into his mouth and seized Neji's knees with a reproachful look, pushing them apart as far as they would go.

If Neji's face could go any redder, it did when Shikamaru picked up one of his legs and hooked it over his shoulder, taking away even more of Neji's control over the situation and opening him up for the phantom's inspection. His skin crawled as Shikamaru's heated gaze raked over his flesh, but not in a bad way; it felt like the cold shiver one might get down their spine after overheating right to the line of danger- seductive in its overstimulation, but not quite crossing the line into uncomfortable territory yet.

"Is this what you wanted?" Shikamaru murmured against his skin, rubbing his cheek up the inside of Neji's thigh as he went until he got to the apex, where he finally - finally! - pressed his lips to the skin on Neji's swollen and feverish erection.

 _Yes! YES!_ Neji screamed, but only in his own head; his hand still covered his mouth and prevented all but the most muffled of sounds from escaping, and he didn't dare make any noise for fear of waking up Sasuke in the room next door. His back arched uncontrollably, pressing himself harder against Shikamaru's face, but the ghost grabbed his hips and pressed them back into the counter to give himself more room to work.

Neji had to concentrate on keeping his hips still as Shikamaru performed the same treatment on his cock as he had to his inner thighs a few scant minutes earlier, swirling the tip of his tongue up and down the length in a teasing pattern without applying much pressure. If he shifted just the tiniest bit, Neji knew, Shikamaru would respond by pulling away and giving him a reproachful look instead of pressing harder, as Neji desired.

Shikamaru traced meaningless patterns up and down Neji's thighs with his fingertips as his tongue performed the same motion over his cock, teasing him past the point of sanity. Neji's toes curled and his fingers were starting to ache from gripping the counter so hard, and as if sensing the exact moment when he couldn't take it anymore, Shikamaru pulled away, leaving Neji to tip backwards from the edge of the precipice just before he reached it.

He tried to call out the phantom's name in protest, but Shikamaru reached up and pressed the hand already covering his mouth tighter over his lips, muffling the cry.

"Easy there, tiger," he whispered with a sly grin. "I thought you were trying to avoid waking Sasuke up?"

Neji's breath hitched at the reminder and he tried to still himself, but his body was trembling too violently to be truly frozen. His body remained silent while his eyes fixed the phantom with a glare, communicating his ill satisfaction with the situation.

Shikamaru muffled a laugh at the sight. "I know, I know; but don't worry. I have something better planned, just you wait."

 _This better be worth it_ , Neji's gaze said, and Shikamaru's eyes crinkled up in a rare indulgent smile.

"It will be, I promise."

Without wasting any more time, Shikamaru delved back down into the once-forbidden territory, pulling his lips back from his teeth so their sharp edges ran across Neji's skin with a tickle that sent tingles straight to his groin. Instead of returning his lips to the pulsating erection between his thighs, however, Shikamaru instead went lower, pulling Neji's legs apart even further. He wrapped Neji's other leg over his shoulder as well, giving himself better access to - something, Neji wasn't quite sure what, though the new position left him more off-balance than before and gripping the edge of the counter with his one available hand for a more practical reason. For a single confused moment, Neji wasn't sure what his goal was, and then he remembered where the ghost had touched him in the shower several days previously, and his eyes widened to the point of saucers.

Oh. _Oooohhhhh._

"Oooooooohhhhhhhh…" He groaned from behind his hand as Shikamaru's tongue flicked almost cautiously against the tight pucker that was his entrance before pressing against it harder and with more confidence. The sound, though muffled by his hand, still rang out rather loudly into the otherwise echoey silence of the bathroom, and he flinched as it assaulted his ears, biting the pad of his palm so hard that he almost drew blood to avoid any other traitorous sounds from escaping him.

Unlike before, no quip about the noise came from Shikamaru. Now he was entirely concentrated on his job, in turn applying and denying pressure in all the right places to make Neji squirm. Unconsciously, Neji squeezed his knees around Shikamaru's head, locking him in place, but the phantom didn't appear to mind; in fact, by the hum he made which sent vibrations through all the right parts of Neji, he was pleased by it.

It was around that time that Neji realized that he was slipping, but there was nothing he could do to warn Shikamaru until he lost his grip on the edge of the counter and fell backwards, his head cracking against the mirror - and hopefully not breaking it; he'd have to check on that later - and his left kidney placing itself in the exact right position to be jabbed by the faucet behind him. Additionally - and this was the part Neji found himself panicking about - his butt was starting to slide off the counter, and he was sure that he was about to tumble on top Shikamaru in the most unromantic way possible, and he squeezed his eyes shut and hoped the phantom wouldn't tease him too terribly about it.

Except it never happened. A second later, Neji's eyes popped open again to gauge the situation around him, and he saw a writhing black shadow looped around his waist and attached to the counter, holding him in place while Shikamaru worked his magic with his mouth. The faucet was still jabbing him in the back, but now that he was stable he was able to take some of the pressure off of it and concentrate - or not concentrate, depending on how it was viewed - on more important things, like the teasing little licks Shikamaru's tongue was giving him and the way it made his stomach feel tight and his legs go weak and jelly-jointed.

Suddenly, Shikamaru's hands delved underneath Neji, gripping his ass and squeezing gently, all while pulling him more securely against his mouth. Neji almost moaned aloud at the sensation again, but kept it in just in time with the remainder of the heel of his palm clamped between his teeth. The shadow binding him to the counter crawled across his skin as if it was exploring Neji's stomach as much as the teasing flicks of Shikamaru's tongue were exploring his bottom half.

Then the hands that had so recently grabbed fistfulls of Neji's ass eased his cheeks apart so Shikamaru could get in closer, and he felt the thick muscle that had been drawing teasing patterns all over his skin finally find a goal and purpose, pushing against his entrance with a flexible strength. Neji had to bite down on the heel of his palm in his mouth hard enough to draw metallic-tasting blood in order to muffle his shuddering moans. The sensation of Shikamaru's tongue splitting him open and delving inside him was so alien that his body jerked, half rejecting it, but so good at the same that he almost couldn't bare it. His skin prickled with erotic heat as shadows continued to weave across his body like wandering hands, holding him steady against the counter so he wouldn't fall when he shuddered as Shikamaru slowly began to fuck his hole with his tongue.

All the pressure in the world couldn't have stopped the sound of Neji's moan from echoing into the bathroom at that, but luckily his hand was able to muffle enough of it that it wouldn't carry far beyond the closed bathroom door. Shikamaru's grip tightened at the sound, and he started to speed up, alternating between quick thrusts of his tongue and longer ones where he stroked Neji's inner walls with laser-like focus.

 _He was right_ , was all Neji could think as the most erotic sensations he'd ever felt wracked his body. _Totally worth it._

Heat started to pool in his abdomen, bringing Neji back up to the ledge Shikamaru had abandoned him at the edge of before, but this time without being touched. As if sensing how close Neji was, Shikamaru moved one of his hands from its perch on Neji's ass to grip his cock and jerked rapidly up and down in tandem with the thrusts of his tongue.

The overload of sensation proved too much for Neji, and he came apart with a shudder, his knees clenching around Shikamaru's head as spasms wracked his body. If he'd been breathing, he was sure that he would have screamed aloud at the sensation, but luckily he'd held his breath just before he came so he didn't have any air left to scream. His back arching, he rode out the waves of his orgasm with the help of Shikamaru's tongue until he dropped back, spent, against the mirror. His legs dropped from their clenched position around Shikamaru's head, and the phantom stood up and pulled Neji into an upright position, dismissing his shadows that had been doing that job earlier and wiping away the evidence of their exploits with the towel Neji had formerly had wrapped around his waist for modesty.

"And how was that? Worth it?"

 _Do I even have to answer?_ Neji asked with his eyes, and Shikamaru laughed gently, pulling Neji's hand away from his mouth.

"Thought so." He leaned in for a kiss, but Neji suddenly thrust his hand in between their mouths, causing a frown to mar Shikamaru's expression. "What is it? Did I do something wrong?"

Shaking his head, Neji glared at Shikamaru's mouth. "You aren't coming anywhere near my face with that tongue. I know where it's been."

For a moment, Shikamaru looked shocked, then an amused grin crept across his face and he started laughing. Shaking his head disbelievingly, he pushed Neji to the side and reached past him to a tiny travel-sized bottle of mouthwash sitting conveniently on the counter next to a bar of soap and a small tube of toothpaste, poured a little into his mouth and swished for a good thirty seconds before spitting it out in the sink.

"Is that better?" He asked with raised eyebrows, and Neji felt a giggle bubble up in his chest that he squashed down before it could take over his throat.

"Much." This time, it was Neji who leaned in for a kiss, drawing the phantom toward him and gripping the back of his neck so he couldn't pull away.

Abruptly, tears of frustration started to pool in Neji's eyes, and he tightened his grip. It wasn't fair that this could feel so good! It shouldn't make him crave more, so he could move on like he was supposed to and forget about Shikamaru and his warm kisses and his soft hands and his strong arms and his magic tongue and his…

Okay, this was getting counterproductive. But still, Neji felt the frustration start to eat away at his insides. He should have never said yes to Shikamaru in the first place, should have never allowed himself to get addicted to the feel of skin on skin and the comfort of a pair of muscular arms to hold him. Because, even if he managed to break off the engagement between himself and Iris - which the chances of were almost nonexistent now - that wasn't where his life was going.

Shikamaru, suddenly feeling the wetness on Neji's cheeks from his tears, pulled back and laid a comforting hand on his jaw. "What is it?" He whispered, though the expression in his eyes told Neji that he already knew what he was going to say.

He decided to say it anyway. "I shouldn't have done that."

"Why? You wanted to."

"Then I shouldn't have wanted to."

"Don't say that."

"But it's true." Neji ran a hand through the hair that was starting to droop over his face, finger-combing it into some semblance of order. It was almost dry from his shower now, but not quite. "I don't have the right to want something I can't have."

Shikamaru's eyes were dark. "And why is that?"

"Because the more I want it, the more it will hurt you."

The phantom stilled at the words. "How do you figure that?"

Neji looked away, unable to meet his eyes. "I can't… _have_ you, Shikamaru; it was never an option for me. I never thought… I never thought that this would go as far as it did when we started. I thought that you'd hang around for a few weeks, then get bored and go somewhere else, and I'd be left with the memories of a fling that I could always hold onto in my most secret of hearts when I was doing what I was always meant to do. But this has gone beyond that now, for both of us, I think."

"And so you think the longer you let this go on, the harder it will be to say goodbye?"

Swallowing down a sudden lump in his throat, Neji said quietly, "I know it will."

"Bullshit." Shikamaru pulled Neji back toward him and rested their foreheads together, staring deep into his eyes. "You're assuming things. We don't have to say goodbye."

"Yes, we do, Shikamaru; weren't you listening? I'll be getting _married_ in a year and a half, and I'm not the type of person to keep someone on the side." He swallowed against his dry mouth. "Not even… not even you."

"You're assuming things again. You might not get married."

Neji gritted his teeth. "That isn't an option, Shikamaru. My family has ordered me to."

"So just tell them no," the phantom said with his head cocked to the side like it was the easiest thing in the world.

"You don't think I haven't already tried that? The last time I did, they moved the date of the wedding two years closer!" Neji abruptly sighed and pushed Shikamaru away. "Just go, Shikamaru. Go back to Konoha where you belong. Lord knows everyone there must miss you. I can take care of myself."

The phantom tapped a finger against his jaw for a second as if considering it, then he shook his head. "No. No, I don't think I will. After all, I never really belonged in Konoha to begin with. I was just better tolerated there than most places."

"Shikamaru-"

"No, I think it's my turn to talk now," the ghost announced. "Neji, I am the laziest person I know. I don't like talking, excess movement, or getting pulled into things that don't concern me. And yet, I am here, with you, right now, because I want to be. Now, working in the army, I've learned a thing or two about tactics, and the most important thing I learned is that there is always a way out of every problem you face."

"Not this one," Neji interjected, but Shikamaru placed a finger in front of his mouth.

"Hush. It's my turn now. As I was saying, there is always a way past every obstacle you can find, if you only look hard enough. Sometimes, it may require sacrifice, sometimes pure dumb luck. The odds may be a million to one, but there is always at least one chance." His thumb ghosted across the surface of Neji's cheekbones. "And I've gotten very good at finding that one chance and following the twisted path until I reach the end. So let me try, Neji. At least let me try."

But Neji was already shaking his head. "I can't tell you the secrets of my family, Shikamaru, you know that. And it wouldn't matter if I did, anyway. I've been trying for three years to make the elders back down; I doubt you could accomplish much in a month."

"A month?" Shikamaru caught the word, and his eyes narrowed. "Why a month? You said you were getting married in a year and a half."

Hesitating, Neji admitted, "A month is… when the marriage will be announced to the rest of the family. Once that's happened, there will be no taking it back. Ever."

"A month…" Shikamaru's face screwed up in contemplation, then he slowly nodded. "I can work with a month."

"Now you're just showing off."

"No, me shoving my tongue up your ass was showing off." A squawk of indignation jerked out of Neji at the abrupt harsh words, but Shikamaru ran over his complaint with narrowed eyes. "This is me proving to you that I don't want to let you go."

Neji couldn't deny that the words made his heart beat a little faster, but he ignored it and turned his head to the side, brushing off the hand laying on his cheek as he did. "It's not that easy, Shikamaru. There are only so many impossibilities a man can overcome in his life."

"Then what's one more?"

"Shikamaru…"

"Put it this way," Shikamaru interrupted. "To you, it's impossible that you'll break out of your engagement. To me, it's impossible that I'll let you get married to someone else. That sounds like two conflicting impossibilities, doesn't it? And what happens when two conflicting impossibilities come head to head?"

"I suppose one of them has to give," Neji admitted. "But that doesn't mean it will be yours that comes out on top; you know that, right?"

"But it doesn't mean that it won't, does it?"

Neji threw his hands into the air. "You're impossible!"

"It's a damn sight better than being boring, though, isn't it?"

"You wish."

"Now you're the one being stubborn." Shikamaru kissed the tip of Neji's nose teasingly and wrapped his arms around him. "Tell me something, Neji: right now, what is the one thing you would want to say to me the most, if you didn't have to worry about your family or your betrothal?"

The truthful answer to the question immediately jumped into Neji's mind, but his cheeks colored at the innuendo they contained and he shook his head. Shikamaru was clearly waiting, though, and providing very good motivation in the form of large, dark eyes like those of a kitten, so he eventually gave up and hunched his shoulders as he spoke.

"I would say… I don't suppose there's any chance I could reciprocate now, is there?"

A wide grin swept across Shikamaru's face, and he immediately pulled Neji in for a quick kiss. "Not yet," he promised, "but soon. Very soon."

"I didn't say that I would actually do it, Shikamaru, I just said-"

"That you wanted it," Shikamaru finished for him. "But it sounds to me like you just admitted to wanting an impossibility. And if I know anything about impossibilities, it's that when two impossible things fight against a third, the lone impossible wish is more likely to fail."

Neji shook his head in disbelief. "I can not believe you."

Shikamaru flashed a hint of white teeth in a grin. "Does that mean I've convinced you to at least try?"

Neji suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion roll over him. Today was just not a good day to be doing this; he was tired, annoyed at Sasuke, angry at his family, worried about Iris, and scared of the wraiths he was supposed to be hunting down. He needed sleep, and he let his shoulders slip down into a hunch as he realized he didn't have the energy to fight off Shikamaru's logic any longer.

"Look, Shikamaru," he said, resting a hand on the phantom's chest to push them a little further apart and keep the other at bay. "I don't have the time or energy to be doing this right now. So just… let me think on it while I do my job here, please? It's not a yes," he quickly interjected when Shikamaru went to speak, "but it's not a no, either. What do you say?"

The phantom's brow furrowed as he thought on it, then he finally nodded. "Fine. But don't expect me to just sit back and let you accept a marriage you don't want just because someone else told you to."

Neji fought off the urge to sigh. It wasn't really like that, but he didn't have the energy left to correct Shikamaru and risk another round of whatever verbal game they had been playing. "Close enough. Now let me get some sleep, you insatiable beast."

"Your wish is my command, O Fairy King." Without warning, Shikamaru picked Neji up off the counter and carried him to the bathroom door, which opened before him without any visible sign of effort from the phantom.

Neji wanted to help at the action, but the door was already open and he didn't want to wake up Sasuke so he settled for a quiet hiss. "Shikamaru! What are you doing?!"

"Helping you get some sleep." Shikamaru gently deposited him on the empty bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. "There. Better?"

"It's too hot," Neji complained, though the blankets did feel nice and he snuggled down into them. A yawn split his features, and he had to fight to keep his eyes open now that he'd finally allowed his head to rest against his pillow.

"Shhhh…." Shikamaru leaned down and laid a gentle kiss on Neji's forehead. "Sleep now, my little fairy boy."

Neji didn't have the strength to disobey him.


	21. Braving the Hospital

And here we go again! Back to everyone's favorite pair of gangsters!

Thank you for your wonderful review, SoraROCK! I wish that was the case, but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately...? Muhahaha!) things aren't going to be as easy as that!

Happy reading!

* * *

If there was one thing Itachi had learned about Raiga in the limited time he'd spent around him, it was that he liked to talk gritty, and liked to talk constantly. So it came as a surprise to him when the three of them, Itachi, Kisame, and Raiga, spent most of the drive to the hospital in silence. Kisame and Itachi were seated in the back seat and Raiga was at the wheel, and Itachi could almost hear the tension in his hands as he gripped the steering wheel.

Deciding to break the tension that was slowly suffocating the interior of the car, Itachi leaned forward and rested his hand on the arm of the seat on front of him.

"So I hear you've got a friend who's staying in this hospital, Raiga?"

Raiga jumped at the sound of Itachi's voice, then swallowed audibly. "Juzu is all our friend."

"That's not what I meant. Isn't there someone else you're visiting as well?"

Silence descended thickly over the interior of the car before Raiga hit his turn signal. "There is… another member who is recovering in the hospital as well. Ranmaru."

"And he's a friend of yours?"

"He's… yes, I suppose you could call him that."

The discomfort in his words was palpable in the air, and Itachi had to hide a frown. When Miru had been talking about Raiga and Ranmaru's friendship, it didn't seem like it was anything that would cause this level of wariness in the man driving their car. Perhaps Raiga was ashamed by his association with Ranmaru? But Miru had said that Raiga had been so upset about his injuries that he had picked a fight with members of his own gang that had failed to protect him; that was not the mark of shame. What, then?

He didn't have long to ponder, as Itachi soon felt the car take a hard turn left into what he imagined to be a parking garage before Raiga slowly pulled it into a spot and killed the engine. The sudden silence felt deafening to him.

"Well," Raiga suddenly said, pushing the car door open with a bang, "I have a visit to make. Meet back here in an hour?"

"That will be plenty of time," Kisame replied, settling his hand on Itachi's knee and giving it a light squeeze in the backseat where Raiga couldn't see them.

"Tops. See you in an hour."

Then he was gone before Itachi could ask him any more questions, slamming the car door behind him with too much venom than was warranted.

"There's something wrong here," he said instantly, reaching over and gripping the hand Kisame had laid on his knee so tightly that he was sure he was causing him pain. "He was callus. He shouldn't be like that. He's supposed to love that boy like his own little brother."

"Maybe he just didn't want to open up to us in particular?"

"Maybe… but I think it's more than that." Itachi abruptly opened his car door and got out of it, then leaned his head back in so Kisame could better hear him. "Those patients aren't going to visit themselves, you know."

Kisame chuckled a little at that and got out the opposite side of the car, slamming the door after him and locking the vehicle with a beep. Itachi quickly followed suit, closing his door and walking around the end of the vehicle to meet his escort. Just before he reached Kisame, however, his foot came down on a particularly slippery section of pavement, and he skidded and would have fallen flat on his face on the asphalt if Kisame hadn't caught him in time.

"Let's try to make it so we're just visiting and not being admitted to the hospital ourselves, hmm, Itachi?"

Itachi felt his face flush, and he pulled himself out of Kisame's arms and straightened his jacket. "Don't mention this ever again."

He heard Kisame laugh, but the bigger man wisely didn't crack any more jokes, just casually rested his hand lightly at the small of Itachi's back to unobtrusively guide him. Itachi hardly felt the contact through the jacket he was wearing, and he was glad for Kisame's casual yet firm assistance that seemed so natural, instead of making him feel like a cripple who needed someone else's help.

They were wearing their suits again, black jackets over white button-down shirts and black dress pants - though Itachi had to take everyone else's word on the color; he wouldn't put it past someone in the gang to replace his shirts with those of another color, though he hoped at least Kisame would have enough decency in him to say something if that happened - but had left the gun holsters they had worn to the meeting behind. The hospital had a metal detector at the door, and they wouldn't get further than the entranceway before they'd be dragged away by security guards if they'd brought them. They weren't completely without defense, though, which Kisame insisted was imperative now that they were part of the gang in an official capacity, as Itachi had a small switchblade made from a nonmetal substance that he wasn't entirely sure exactly what it was was, but had been assured that it would cut someone if he pushed hard enough, and Kisame had his brute strength. Itachi had also traded in his bandana for a pair of sunglasses again, not wanting to tout his affiliation with the gang more than absolutely necessary.

The hospital was busy, busier than Itachi remembered his father's in Chicago ever being, though he would admit that he hadn't had any kind of contact with the ground floors during the past decade so he wasn't an expert on the subject. Even before they entered the actual building, Itachi could hear hundreds of voices darting around him like tiny leaves floating on the surface of a turbulent river, some excited, some upset, some reserved, and some with the unrestrained joy of children. Kisame led him with purpose to a destination he couldn't see, traversing through the crowds of people heading to and from their cars to the entrance of the hospital until they reached a set of doors that automatically slid open at their approach, letting out a puff of climate controlled air that smelled faintly of disinfectant and - to Itachi - fear.

The tail of a white lab coat whirled at the edge of Itachi's nonexistent vision, followed by a prickling in his wrists where he had been bound and a phantom voice promising him in gentle tones that hid infinite cruelty that this wouldn't hurt before a needle slid into his veins, injecting him with a fluid that took away his humanity.

He stumbled to a stop right outside the doors, his feet refusing to go any further. Kisame stopped as well when he felt his arm being tugged back, pausing between Itachi and the door and - probably accidentally - blocking the source of the scent that had momentarily blindsided him.

"Itachi? Are you alright?"

"Nope." Itachi's concise response came out sounding more like a squeak. "I need a minute. Walking into here is… not the best thing for my nerves right now."

"Oh! Oh my god! I didn't even think-!"

"It's fine!" Itachi cut him off quickly, hyper aware of those around them that had quieted to hear their conversation. "Don't make a scene. I'll- I'll just be a minute."

"Excuse me!" The crackly voice of an elderly lady with a strong New York accent came from behind them, laced with annoyance. "You're holding up the line! Either go in or stay out so the rest of us can use the door!"

Kisame immediately rounded on the woman, his temper flaring. "Will you shut up?! Can't you see my friend is having a panic attack-?"

"Kisame!" Itachi grabbed the front of Kisame's jacket with desperate white-knuckled fingers. "I said not to make a scene! Just- shove me through the door or something!"

"But-"

Itachi gritted his teeth. "Just do it!"

Pausing only to give the impatient woman with the New York accent one last glare, Kisame turned and pushed Itachi through the open doors of the hospital, despite his locked knees and protesting feet. Once they were in the lobby, however, Itachi forced himself to take several deep breaths through his nose, causing the scent to diminish somewhat, and it was almost possible for him to ignore the fact that he was inside of a hospital, a place he'd said he'd never return to.

Almost possible.

Hyper aware of his anxiety, Kisame pulled Itachi off to the side and leaned in close to him. "How are you doing?"

"Fine," Itachi managed through tight lips, all the while chanting in his brain, _This is a place of healing, not a prison; this is a place of healing, not a prison._

"Okay…" Kisame didn't sound convinced, but he backed up all the same. "I have to go talk to the secretary to get us cleared for the visit. Can you wait here for me?"

Wait here? For Kisame? As in, alone? Itachi's heart pounded a little harder at the thought, but he forced himself to nod. "I- I'll be fine."

"Good." Kisame squeezed his arm a little tighter before letting go and stepping back. "I'll be just across the room, so just holler if you need me."

Itachi could only manage a grunt in reply, but he suspected that Kisame was too far away to hear it by the time it found its way out of his throat.

The room suddenly seemed to expand now that Itachi was alone, stretching so far beyond the reaches of his limited senses that Itachi was unsure whether it had limits or not. Bodiless voices echoed in a swirling hurricane all around him as if mocking him in his inability to move by himself. Itachi was tempted to hum to himself to drown out the words, but he just bit his lip and squeezed one wrist with his opposite hand and hoped Kisame would return soon.

"Excuse me, mister," a high-pitched feminine voice near Itachi's elbow suddenly said, cutting through the swirling din and jumping him. He ignored the voice, thinking it was for somebody else, until she cleared her voice and said it again, but a little more insistently.

"Excuse me, mister!"

"S-sorry, are you talking to me?" He asked, hating the stutter that overtook his first word and shrinking in on himself because of it.

"Yes, I was." The annoyance in the woman's voice was clear.

"O-oh. Sorry about that." Itachi moved to the side so she could get past him. He had thought that Kisame had settled him in a place where he wouldn't obstruct the flow of traffic, but perhaps this woman needed to get to some place specific and thus wasn't part of the general foot traffic.

Cocking his head to the side, Itachi forgot the woman and tried instead to focus on his breathing, steady in, steady out, to calm his racing heartbeat. At least, he forgot about her until she cleared her throat again, this time anger lacing her tone and a sound like she was hitting something with the flat of her palm assaulting Itachi's ears.

"I said, excuse me, mister!"

This time, Itachi turned his face in the direction the woman's voice came from, exasperation leaking from his voice. "What?!"

"How rude!" The woman gasped. "If you continue to disrespect me and the rules of this establishment, mister, I'm going to have to call security!"

"Security?!" Itachi's jaw dropped. "Now look here, miss: I moved out of the way for you when you said 'excuse me'! What else do you want from me?"

"Move out of the way-! Now you mock me by ignoring me? I was pointing to the _sign_ , in case you weren't paying attention! The one right in front of you that says you cannot wear hats, hoods, or sunglasses inside this establishment! Can't you read?"

"No," Itachi replied in an icy tone, something that shocked the woman into silence. "No, as a matter of fact, I cannot read, because I am _blind_ , which is why I'm wearing sunglasses indoors. And no, I can't take them off."

"Is there a problem here?" A familiar voice suddenly asked, and Itachi turned to him with relief sagging his shoulders, but before he could say anything, the woman jumped forward with overflowing gratitude.

"Oh, thank goodness you're here! This man was flaunting our rules right in front of the front desk-!"

"Not you," Kisame scoffed, casually pushing to woman to the side and laying a comforting hand on Itachi's shoulder, which he instantly relaxed into, feeling a tension drain from his shoulders that he hadn't noticed until it was gone. "Are you okay, Itachi? Still nervous?"

"Better now that you're back," Itachi admitted, his fingers entwining in the folds of Kisame's jacket. "Did you really park me directly in front of the 'do not wear sunglasses' sign?"

"No, I di-" Kisame started, then broke off as he glanced behind Itachi. "So I did! Sorry about this, miss," he said to the woman who was still standing next to them in what Itachi guessed to be open-mouthed shock. "I forgot about the no sunglasses rule here. Guess we should have stuck with the bandana today after all, huh?" He nudged Itachi in the side with his elbow, and the blind man smiled weakly at the inside joke.

"Excuse me!" The woman's voice shook with unrestrained shock and anger. "You're supposed to listen to me, not him! What kind of security guard are you?"

"I'm not one," Kisame answered flatly. "My companion and I are here to visit a friend. He can't remove his sunglasses because he is legally blind and uses them to cover his scars. You wouldn't ask an amputee to remove his prosthetic just to enter here, would you?"

"But…! But…!" The woman floundered about before finding her voice again. "But we have rules…! And I'm not supposed to…!" Then she broke off with a sigh. "Do you at least have some identification on you?"

Itachi's heart sank; he and Kisame had been photographed for fake IDs, but they hadn't received them yet to his knowledge. He was about to open his mouth and tell the woman - who he now guessed must be a receptionist - as much, but Kisame beat him to it, drawing something out of his inside breast pocket and handing it to her.

"Here. For both of us. I'm registered as his primary guardian."

"Hmm." There was a pause as the receptionist looked over both the IDs in her hand and the two men in front of her before sighing and handing them back to Kisame. "I suppose I can let it slide this time. But we don't make exceptions like this very often, you hear me? The next time you come here, you better be wearing something more appropriate."

Itachi couldn't resist sending the receptionist a wry smile as Kisame snagged his arm to lead him away. "I'll try, miss. Nice shoes, by the way."

"Why, thank you-" they heard her start as they hurried away, followed quickly by a, "Hey! What the-! But-!"

"Classic," Itachi sniggered once they were out of earshot.

"That was childish, Itachi," Kisame admonished as he pulled the blind man down the hallway.

"Well, she was being rude!"

"That doesn't change anything."

"So you admit she was being rude?"

"Oh, extremely. But that still doesn't give you the right to play her like that."

"I wasn't." Itachi gave a brief snort. "Her shoes were nice- thin, strappy heels that are against hospital dress code and she's likely only able to get away with wearing because she sits behind a desk all day. She's probably got a date tonight and didn't want to bother changing them."

For a moment, Kisame faltered in his step, stunned. "How could you tell?"

"The noise they make against the floor is unmistakable. I busted enough nurses with inappropriate footwear in my day to recognize the sound of a stiletto against linoleum."

Kisame shook his head in disbelief. "Amazing."

"I do try." A sudden thought struck Itachi. "Kisame, I didn't know our IDs had come in yet."

"Oh, Miri handed them to me just before we left. Sorry, forgot to mention it. I'll keep you in the loop better next time."

"No, that's not it." Itachi frowned delicately, the crease it caused between his eyebrows hidden by his sunglasses. "What does mine say for a last name? You didn't put my real one, did you?"

"No, of course not!" Kisame quickly assured him. "I gave you a different one, don't worry."

Itachi waited several seconds for Kisame to tell him what it was, then frowned again when he remained silent. "Well?"

Kisame, uncharacteristically, jumped at the sound of Itachi's voice. "Well, what?"

"Well, are you going to tell me what it is?"

"Oh!" Nervousness crept into Kisame's tone. "It's, um… Hoshi-Hoshigaki. Itachi Hoshigaki."

"Hoshigaki, huh? That's a unique one. Where'd you pull that from?"

"It's actually, um…" Then he trailed off so quietly that even Itachi's keen ears couldn't pick out the words.

"What was that?"

After taking a deep breath, Kisame repeated a little louder, "It's my last name, actually. I thought… maybe you wouldn't mind. Sharing it, that is." A note of panic crept into his voice. "Un- unless you want your own! We can change it to something else easy-"

"Kisame." Itachi came to a complete stop in the hallway, the fingers of the hand resting on Kisame's jacket-clad arm clutching the fabric with abandon.

"Wha- what?" Kisame asked with trepidation.

"Was there ever any doubt that something like this _wouldn't_ make me happy?"

Itachi could almost hear Kisame's face cracking from the wide grin that overtook it. "You had me going there for a minute."

"Come off it; you knew I would love it." They started walking again so not as to draw attention to themselves, and Itachi bowed his head to hide the slap-happy smile still decorating his face.

"It feels nice," he said after they had gone the length of several hallways in silence.

"What does?"

"Having a… I don't know, a family again. You know my father refused to put my last name on my door, so I've been without a family name for the past eight years. It feels nice to have one again." He paused for a second, hearing his own words aloud and letting them sink in. "So, what's our cover story? Am I your estranged brother come in to town for a visit or something?"

"Close; cousin, and you're staying with me for the foreseeable future to give your former caregiver a break."

"That makes me sound like a burden."

"You're not, I promise."

The conversation came to an abrupt close as they rounded one last hallway and Kisame squeezed Itachi's hand to let him know that they were nearing their destination. They slowed as Kisame quietly read the numbers off the plaques on the wall beside the doors.

"206… 208… here we are, 210."

He knocked on the door jamb, and a disgruntled voice issued from within. "Whatever. Just get your ass in here."

Kisame took a single step inside the room so the occupant could get a good look at his face. "Hello, Juzu. Is that any way to greet a visitor?"

"Kis- Kisame!?" Juzu gasped, and Itachi got the feeling he would have jumped out of bed if he hadn't been strapped to an IV. "You gotta be shitting me! They got you back? Man, I thought you was never comin' back here!"

"It appears they did," Kisame chuckled. "And it looks like you've lost some of your skill while I was away."

"That ain't true! Those bastards jumped me from behind, ten to one too- that's the only reason I'm in here and they ain't dead! I'll show you as soon as I get outta this place."

"Are you sure you can still handle it, Zu?"

"You insultin' me? I ain't the one who's gone soft, 'Same!"

"Oh, was that a threat, now?"

"Just you wait! I'll show you!"

The tension in the room escalated with the volume of their voices until Itachi was worried that the two might come to blows right there in the hospital. But then laughter from both parties abruptly echoed into the tiny space, easing the tension from before.

"Good God, Juzu, it is good to see you," Kisame greeted warmly, sitting down next to the hospital bed in a chair that creaked under his weight and clasping the injured man's arm. "How's everything been going for you? Break up with your girl yet?"

"Which one? I've had like five since I seen you last."

"That many? You're a stud, 'Zu; you always have been."

"And you're as dopey as ever. Good to know at least something's the same."

Suddenly, Juzu pulled up short in his conversation. "You've got a shadow," he murmured under his breath just low enough to be at the edges of a normal person's hearing, and Itachi felt surprise jolt through him. He thought he'd hid his presence well, staying back from the open door of the hospital room, but Juzu had easily sensed him.

Letting an easy smile decorate his face, Itachi swung into the doorframe, using his fingers against the hinge as reference point. "It's just little old me," he said lightly, trying not to let it show on his face how jealous he'd been of Juzu's easy conversation with Kisame, even though he had no reason to be.

Kisame instantly jumped up from his seat and grabbed Itachi's elbow, leading him to the bedside. "God, Itachi, you didn't have to skulk outside! Come in, come in!"

"Didn't want to interrupt your happy reunion," he said quietly as he sat. He got the feeling Juzu was gazing at him with a suspicious look.

"Itachi, huh?" He mused. "The blind guard dog?"

"I don't suppose I'm ever going to get rid of that nickname now," Itachi sighed. "Yes, that's me. Kisame's blind guard dog."

"Ah, so you're the one who broke Fuguki's nose!"

"...I see my reputation precedes me."

"Nah, don't worry about it." Juzu reached out and slapped Itachi's upper arm, causing him to grit his teeth to avoid outwardly wincing. How on earth was a man injured enough to be strapped to a hospital bed that strong? "Fuguki can be an asshat sometimes. I mean, he's strong and smart and we all look up to him 'n all, but there's been plenty of people who wanted to break his nose before, myself included. You just beat us to it."

Itachi gave a light snort. "Glad to offer my services."

Another whack that had Itachi gritting his teeth hit his arm, and another laugh burst out from Juzu. "Kisame, where'd you get this guy? He's hilarious!"

"Broke him out of a psychiatric ward."

"...And I wasn't expecting that. Fuck, but you've been busy while you were away, eh, Kisame?"

"Probably not as much as you have." Kisame shook his head appreciatively. "Do you know when you're supposed to be out of here?"

Juzu heaved a sigh of great impatience. "Who knows. The doctors said a week a week ago and two days five days ago, so damned if I know. I mean, it's not that big of a deal; it's only a stab wound to the stomach. It's not like I got shot or anything."

"Well, don't you worry about rushing things," Kisame said, clapping a hand on Juzu's arm. "You come back when the doctors say you're good and healed, alright?"

"Easy for you to say," Juzu grumbled. "You're not the one going stir-crazy sitting in this room with nothing to do all day."

"I'll tell you what: when you get back and are all healed up, why don't we have an old-fashioned skin rumble? That oughtta give you something to look forward to."

"Yeah!" Ironically, or at least it seemed that way to Itachi, Juzu seemed more excited about the prospect of potentially getting injured again than being fully healed. "It's been forever since I got to punch that stupid face of yours!"

The sound of cracking knuckles filled the room. "Not if I punch yours in first!"

Itachi heaved a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's always senseless violence with you folks, isn't it?"

"What's the fun in reasoned conversation?" Kisame teased, poking his cheek.

"It's less likely to get someone killed."

Kisame tweaked his cheek. "Says the person who tackled a man to the ground and then smashed his face into the floor hard enough to break his nose. Three times, no less."

"That was _different_. He deserved it."

"Um, excuse me?" A timid knock at the open door broke off the conversation, and Itachi was suddenly very aware of how loud they'd been talking and how well sound carried in the hospital hallways. "But Mr. Juzu needs to have his medications now, so I'm afraid you're going to have to leave."

"Already?" Juzu groaned. "I suppose. Drug me up."

"We'll see you again soon," Kisame promised as he stood and helped Itachi do the same.

"You better. I can't wait to rough you up. By, 'Same."

After exchanging a few more pleasantries, Kisame and Itachi managed to escape Juzu's hospital room as he was making some snarky comment to the nurse about the drugs she was giving him. Itachi shuddered at the thought of the needle that must be embedded in Juzu's arm, feeding him painkillers at a rate to keep him comfortable but still coherent. The smell suddenly got to him again, and he had to resist the urge to dry heave. Kisame, as if sensing the resurgence in his distress, grabbed his arm and dragged him down the hallway for a few paces before coming to a stop.

"How are you? Up for one more?"

 _No. I want out NOW._ But Itachi only took a deep breath to steady his shaking hands and nodded. "That is what we came here to do. Let's go see the little boy special enough to charm Raiga into submission."

As it turned out, Ranmaru's room was only a few hallways away from Juzu's, and they reached it within a minute of walking. To his surprise, however, Itachi heard someone hovering nervously in the hallway, their fingernails scraping the skin of their arms with quiet scritches and their toes tapping on the floor in an irregular rhythm. He was even more surprised to hear Kisame greet him.

"Raiga? What are you doing hovering out here?"

Raiga jumped when his name was called, embarrassment creeping into his tone at having been caught. "Oh-! B-Boss! I didn't think you were… um, well… I just… he's asleep now," he finished up rather lamely.

"Did you get a chance to visit with him before he fell asleep?"

"Well, um… no," Raiga finally, admitted, scratching his head in embarrassment. "He was asleep when I got here. I didn't want to wake him."

Itachi frowned slightly. "So what, you've been standing outside his room this entire time?"

"No!" Raiga quickly defended himself, then added sheepishly, "Just… just most of it. I, um… saw Juzu for a few minutes… and then I went and sat down next to his bed for a little while… but I left when he started to move; I don't think he would really want to see me…"

"And why not?" Kisame demanded rather loudly. "Isn't he your friend?"

"Shh, shh, keep it down!" Raiga whispered desperately, grabbing onto Kisame's arm before realizing what he had just done and dropping it like it was a red-hot branding iron. "Don't wake him! He needs rest! He doesn't… well, he doesn't need me. I'm the one who got him into this life and this mess in the first place."

Unfortunately, the warning came too late, and Itachi heard a small sound of stirring from the open door in front of them, and a sleepy voice floated out to greet them, punctuated by a yawn. "... Hello? Is there… aahhh… anyone there?"

The voice couldn't have come from a boy older than twelve or fourteen, the crack of a register drop still evident in his timbre. The words that most quickly jumped into Itachi's brain at the sound were _sweet_ and _innocent_ , and he easily understood the rough-'n-tough Raiga's attention to the young boy; something about his voice just screamed vulnerability, the kind that would make people instinctively want to protect.

Or, in this kind of environment, the kind of vulnerability that attracted attention in other ways and painted a target on his back.

Itachi surreptitiously elbowed Kisame in the side and jerked his head an infinitesimal distance toward the open door. Quickly catching on to Itachi's plan, Kisame stepped into the open doorway and gave a quiet knock on the doorframe.

"Ranmaru, is it? May we come in?"

Ranmaru took in the sight of the strange man in a suit standing in his doorway and shivered. "Wh-who are you? And h-how d-do you know my n-name?" He gasped, drawing in on himself. A heart rate monitor that was emitting constant, steady blips suddenly went up in tempo. "Are- are y-you here t-to finish-sh the j-job you s-started?"

"Don't worry, Ranmaru, we're not here to hurt you," Kisame said in a steady, soothing voice, taking a single step into the room to allow Itachi to join him in the doorframe. "We just wanted to come see you- pay our respects, like. I don't know if you've heard, but my name is Kisame and I'm your new Boss."

Itachi noticed how careful he was to give Ranmaru the correct information without saying too much that might be overheard by the wrong person. The boy obviously recognized the name, because the mechanized audible heartbeat filling the room slowly decreased in tempo again, though not quite as far apart as they had been when he'd been sleeping.

"B-Boss Kisame?" He gasped. "What are- why are you here? To see… me?"

"Well, why wouldn't I?" Kisame gestured to the inside of the room with one hand and reached back to touch Itachi's wrist with the other. "May we come in?"

"Of- of course!"

"Thank you very much, Ranmaru." Kisame guided Itachi toward the bedside and the few chairs that were next to it. Closer to the boy, the smell of chemicals and medicine and the sound of the heart rate monitor got more intense to his sensitive perception, and Itachi had to fight to keep every breath he took entering and exiting his lungs at a steady rate.

"P-please f-forgive the mess, Boss; I don't get very many visitors," Ranmaru gasped as Kisame and Itachi sat down next to him. "Actually, I've only gotten one since I came here."

The words jumped out at Itachi, and he focused on them with laser-like intensity to take his mind off his churning stomach. "What do you mean? I thought Raiga visited you nearly every day."

"R-Raiga…" A mournful note entered the boy's voice. "I don't think… I don't think he wants to see me. Why would he? I'm a disappointment to him."

"I'm sure he doesn't think that-" Kisame tried, but Ranmaru only shook his head and started to sniffle.

"Of course I am! He found me, gave me everything I have, including a home and the job I have, and now… I failed him. I failed everyone."

"Ranmaru, a single mistake and a few injuries do not make you a disappointment! Everybody has times like these; you'll pull through, you'll see. I would never deny anyone a second chance for something that isn't their fault."

"Th-thanks, Boss, but…" And then Ranmaru started to cry in ernest, his semi-pubescent voice wracked with sobs. "But I couldn't use a second chance even if you gave it to me. The doctors said… they said… the bullet hit my spine. They couldn't repair the damage. I'll never… I'll never walk again!"

Itachi and Kisame sat frozen in their chairs as the news sunk in. They'd had no idea - and Itachi was miffed that no one had thought to warn them not to upset the boy, who was currently sobbing his eyes out, his breathing coming faster and faster, which in turn… made his heart rate go up… and made the mechanical beast hooked up to him beep faster and faster.

"Ranmaru…" Kisame said quietly, and Itachi could tell that he was struggling to find a way to comfort him, but didn't know how. Itachi himself was just trying to find a way to hide his mounting panic attack as the mechanized sound of the young boy's heart beating brought to mind the feel a tight band at his wrist monitoring his pulse and a syringe full of cold liquid being injected into his veins, dulling his senses and stealing away his humanity.

"Now look what you did," a quiet voice interrupted from the doorway. "You made him cry."

"Raiga?" Itachi turned back to the door, desperate to find something else to focus his mind on.

"R-Raiga?" This time, the word echoed from the bed, accompanied with a sniffle. "You w-were… you were here?"

"I been here a lot, little guy," Raiga said quietly, a sad smile in his voice. "Just… mostly when you were asleep."

"Why didn't you wake me?" Ranmaru cried, his voice thick with tears. "I wanted to see you! I wanted… I wanted-!"

"I know you did, little guy. Sorry that I… I wasn't strong enough to see you. I didn't want to disappoint you more than I already had."

Shock and hurt crept into Ranmaru's broken tone. "Disappoint… disappoint me? How could you disappoint me? You're the best, Raiga- I've always looked up to you! You gave me everything I have, a job and a home, a family! How could you ever think that you could disappoint me? I'm the one who disappointed you!"

"No, buddy. It's not your fault. It's mine." Raiga stepped closer to the bed, and Itachi quickly gave up his seat so he could get closer to Ranmaru, getting himself further away from the chemical smell and the sound of his heart being monitored in the process. "It's my fault for involving you in the world that I live in. You're too pure for a life like this, Ranmaru. If I saw fit to bring someone like you into my mess, the least I could do is protect you in exchange. But I… I-!" He gasped, his voice suddenly cracking as if there were tears rolling down his cheeks. "I couldn't even do that! And now you're here, and it's… it's all my fault!"

"I-it's not y-your fault, R-Raiga," Ranmaru sobbed, choking noises breaking up his words. "I-it's my f-fault for being s-so weak!"

"Ranmaru!" Raiga closed the remaining distance between him and the hospital bed in a blink, taking Ranmaru in his arms and crushing the injured boy to his chest with as much strength as he dared. "I'm sorry…! So sorry!"

Kisame stood up and backed away from the sobbing pair on the bed, coming to stand next to Itachi. "Do you think we should give them a moment?" He whispered quietly out of the side of his mouth, but Itachi didn't answer. As it was, he was barely able to grab Kisame's jacket sleeve with scrabbling fingers and keep himself from falling to the ground.

Instantly Kisame's strong arms were around him, holding him as his weak knees threatened to send him to the floor. "Itachi, what's wrong?" He demanded, shaking Itachi's shoulders with enough force to make his head loll.

Itachi's mouth opened in a futile O shape, but nothing came out. He started shaking, violent tremors and cold shivers wracking his body, despite the heat of the hospital and the layers of clothing he was wearing. His fingers turned to claws, and he started to tear at the front buttons of his jacket, but they were shaking too hard to accomplish any real work.

"Itachi?!"

Finally, Itachi found his voice, grasping Kisame's shirtsleeves in both hands. "Get… get it off me…" He rasped, nausea starting to build in his stomach as the mechanized heartbeat started to beat louder in his ears, competing with his own thundering pulse.

"Itachi-!"

"GET IT OFF ME!" Itachi suddenly roared, ripping at his own clothing. His breathing was fast, too fast, and his medical knowledge told him he would pass out from hyperventilation soon if he couldn't slow it down, but somehow there was a disconnect between the rational part of his brain and the part directing his actions.

Kisame heeded his demand, quickly undoing the buttons down the front of Itachi's jacket and pulling it off, throwing it away somewhere Itachi couldn't follow with his limited and distracted senses. As soon as it was gone, Itachi yanked up the sleeve of his left arm as far as it would go and started to scrabble with the fingers of his right hand at the flesh of his upper arm, gouging long scratches deep enough to well blood.

"Get it off of me!" He begged again, desperation leaking from every pore of his body. "I can't… I can't take it anymore…"

"Take what, Itachi?" Kisame asked in concern, grabbing his hand to stop the scratching. "There's nothing there!"

"Don't lie to me; I can feel it!" Itachi started to sob brokenly, and tears would have been streaming down his face if he still had eyes. He pulled desperately at Kisame's grip, seeking to rip away the phantom cloth tightening around his upper arm. "It's right there, on my arm; I can feel it, I know it's there! I know they put that band on me so they can put the medicine in me!"

"Medicine-?"

"I can smell it!" He cried hoarsely, his left hand unconsciously curling into a fist as the doctors had always forced it when they'd been about inject him with a syringe full of sedatives, right after they'd tied a tight band around his upper arm. "They're going to put it in me and make me sleep… you said they wouldn't do that to me anymore! You said you wouldn't let them sedate me ever again!"

"And they won't, Itachi," Kisame said very calmly, having finally caught on to what was going on with Itachi and swiftly decided on a course of action. "They aren't here. It's just you and me. I promise no one is coming to sedate you."

"But… the monitor… heart rate monitor…" Itachi gasped, hearing Ranmaru's heartbeat jump up in tempo as it was mentioned, a sign that they had an attentive audience, but he couldn't bring himself to contemplate the repercussions of that or even care. "It's too loud… too fast… they don't like it when it's fast…"

Kisame swore, now realizing exactly what had set Itachi off. "Raiga, is there any way you can silence that thing?" He barked across the room as Itachi shivered in his arms.

"I… Sure thing, Boss!"

After a few mechanical noises as Raiga punched a few random buttons, the constant infernal beeping finally cut out, and Itachi sagged like a marionette whose strings had been unceremoniously dropped to the floor, an unwanted toy. He might have landed on the ground if Kisame hadn't caught him, and he just allowed himself to lay against the bigger man's chest, his breathing slowly returning to normal. Just as slowly, the phantom band resting tight around his arm loosened and fell away into the black nothingness surrounding him, and Itachi finally heaved one last trembling sigh when it was gone, burying his nose in the fabric of Kisame's jacket so he wouldn't have to smell the antiseptic chemical scent of the hospital room anymore.

"S-sorry, Kisame…" Itachi whispered brokenly when he had recovered enough to speak. "I… It was just too… too much, all at once. Sorry."

"Idiot." Kisame wrapped both his strong arms more snugly around Itachi and laid his chin against the top of his head. "I asked you and you said you were fine! You should have told me if it was getting this bad!"

"It… kinda erupted before I knew what was happening. Sorry."

"And quit apologizing about it! It's not your fault, you hear? I should have been paying better attention."

"Sorr-" Itachi caught himself in the middle of the apology, then changed his words. "I mean, okay."

"That's better."

Into the silence that followed Kisame's gentle scolding, Ranmaru's voice echoed out suddenly. "You… your face…"

Itachi instantly stiffened and reached up to find, to his horror, that his sunglasses had been knocked aside during his fit and his scarred and empty eye sockets were on display. His shoulders hunched and he pushed his hands over his face.

"Where…" His lips were dry and cracked, so he paused to wet them with a tongue that was almost as dry. "Where are my glasses?"

"Here." Kisame leaned back for a second to bend down and retrieve something from the floor, then gently pulled Itachi's hands away from his face to slip the sunglasses over his empty eye sockets. "Better?"

"Better," Itachi agreed shakily at the same time as Ranmaru piped up from the bed again.

"So… you can't see?"

Itachi froze at the words. He could tell Kisame was about to respond to them, but he managed to thaw quickly enough to lay a hand on his arm, their signal to let Itachi do the talking. That didn't mean that he could do it right away, however.

"That is… correct," he finally managed to say, turning back towards the hospital bed and flashing the young boy who lay there a weak smile. These words were important, so he had to choose them carefully, each one rolling around his mouth like a marble before slipping off his tongue. "I can't see. And as you can obviously tell, I have some… other issues as well."

"So… you're a little like me. Crippled. No longer whole." The words _and you're still working in the gang_ were left unsaid, but implied.

Itachi paused, the words running through his head. He hadn't thought about it before, but he and the boy in front of him were similar. They had both lost a part of themselves that other people, looking in on them, would say was necessary for normal life. That they were no longer whole people. That they were crippled.

But Itachi had never been fond of that particular word.

"Let me tell you something," he announced to the boy laying in the bed. "I've been through a lot of pain in my life, and I've lost parts of myself that I thought were important before. But I will never call myself a cripple, because that would mean that I am broken, that I am useless. _And I am not_."

Ranmaru's breath hitched in a gasp, but Itachi foraged onwards.

"A life can be changed by any kind of loss, whether that loss is internal, outward, or in the environment around you. You can either allow the change to rule your life, or you can simply learn to live with it. Work around it. Try something different. You might surprise yourself with what you can do if you put your mind to it."

Itachi let his hand slip off Kisame's arm, ending their signal, and he grabbed the shorter man before he could say anything else. "Itachi…"

"I may need to… step outside a minute," Itachi said tightly, raising his hand to his nose to block out the chemical scent which had set him off earlier.

"Go; I'll be right behind you."

Itachi needed no further coaxing; he quickly turned and left the room, keeping his hand over his mouth and nose all the while, and walked down the hallway using his other hand, trailing across the wall, as a guide. When he reached a corner, he stopped, taking several breaths of the air surrounding him. It still smelled faintly chemical, but it no longer had the medical tint to it that had hovered around Ranmaru and set off Itachi's panic attack. Forcing himself to breathe normally, Itachi rolled the sleeve he'd ricked up to his shoulder down again, wincing as the fabric pressed against the scratches he'd inflicted. Damn, he'd really done a number on himself with that one. Leaning back against the wall, he settled in to wait for Kisame.

It only took a few minutes, during which he heard muffled voices coming from the room he had just left, before Kisame's familiar heavy footsteps stepped out into the hallway, paused as he searched for Itachi, and then headed confidently toward him. Itachi pushed himself away from the wall as he approached, reaching out to grasp the jacket he knew Kisame would be handing him when he got within arms reach.

"It's creepy when you do that," Kisame murmured, depositing the jacket in Itachi's open arms.

Itachi shrugged as he pulled open the jacket and slipped it over his dress shirt. "Process of elimination and subtle clues in the rhythm of your footsteps. What's so creepy about that?"

"The fact that it seems so natural to you." Kisame reached forward and did up the buttons on Itachi's jacket with measured precision. "That was an impressive speech you gave back there."

Itachi couldn't help but puff up a bit with pride at the words. "You think so? I was just trying to make up for the damn panic attack I had in front of both of them. God, that was embarrassing. First Miru, now Raiga. I'm going to be lucky if I don't freak out in front of every member of the group before the end of the month!"

"Well, look how that ended up with Miru. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Itachi: it's not your strengths that make you admirable. It's your ability to overcome your weaknesses." Kisame laid a hand in the center of Itachi's back in preparation of guiding him forward. "Come on; let's get you out of here before you faint on me."

"But what about Raiga?" Itachi protested with a frown, though Kisame's words did ring with an uncomfortable truth; he did feel close to passing out. "Wasn't he supposed to come back with us?"

"Change of plans. Ranmaru doesn't want Raiga to go, Raiga wants to spend some more time with him, and we need to get you someplace less hazardous to your mental health. So we compromised. We're walking home."

"Walking?!"

"Not all the way," Kisame quickly amended in the face of Itachi's affronted tone. "Just a little bit. There's… well, I remembered how you were the first night after our escape, in that little field, and I thought some nature might make you feel better. This hospital is only a few blocks away from Central Park, so I thought… we might as well make a day of it. Raiga will pick us up on his way back."

A smile started to spread across Itachi's face. "So… it's like a date?"

"In a way. If you want it to be."

Suddenly, the hospital didn't seem so much like a desolate prison of antiseptic and monitors anymore. "I think I'd like that very much."

As if he couldn't contain himself any longer, Kisame moved his hand from Itachi's back to his hand so he could lace their fingers together, and when he spoke, there was barely concealed laughter in his voice.

"We'd better hurry, then. Wouldn't want to be late for our very first date, now would we?"

* * *

It was late afternoon by the time Neji opened his eyes again, judging by the angle of the sun coming through the window of the hotel room. For a few moments, he was blissfully unaware of where he was, only conscious of the softness of the sheets surrounding his body and the utterly satisfied ache in his bones, before the events of last night - erm, that morning - flashed into his mind and he sat bolt upright in bed. The bed next to him was empty, so he figured Sasuke was in the bathroom, a guess that was proven correct by the sound of the shower running, which he noticed a moment later.

The sheets slid against Neji's skin as he shifted slightly, making him acutely aware of the fact that he'd been naked when Shikamaru had put him to bed and - though he hadn't believed it so he had to duck his head briefly under the sheets to check - he'd slept like that comfortably for the first time in his life. A red fire started to burn in his cheeks as he remembered words Shikamaru had murmured to him that first night in that husky voice of his: _Real men sleep naked, Neji._

 _Well,_ Neji thought-argued right back to the past version of the phantom, _I hope Real Men also clean up bathrooms, or Sasuke will have gotten an eyeful and a noseful of things he never needed to see or sniff in his life. Because I certainly passed out too quickly to take care of it._

Thankful that Sasuke was in the bathroom and couldn't bear witness to his lack of clothing or his embarrassed cheekbones, Neji quickly shoved the sheets off him and hurried to his suitcase, where he clothed himself in the first few layers of his normal outfit, a three-piece suit with a tie, before his roommate could return. In less than a minute, the shower turned off, and Neji found himself buttoning up his cuffs with his collar popped when Sasuke made his way out of the bathroom, wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt that clung to his still-damp frame, his towel still hanging around his neck.

"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty."

Neji acknowledged the insult with a scowl. The first thing out of his mouth hadn't been a crack about the soiled towel Neji had left or any lingering scent of sweat and musk, so Shikamaru must have cleaned up after the mess they had caused after all. "It's afternoon. And you slept longer than I did."

"Yeah, sorry about that. Where'd I pass out? I honestly don't remember coming back here last night- this morning."

"At the top of the tower." Neji slung his tie around his neck and tied it with practiced fingers before pulling his collar down to its proper place. "I had to drag your sorry ass back here."

"I already said sorry." Sasuke passed behind Neji to sit on the bed and tug on his socks and shoes. "So, did you find out anything useful? Do we have a plan now?"

Neji couldn't help the small smile that spread over his lips as he bent down to slip on his shoes, then grabbed his jacket and slipped it over his shoulders. He loved it when he was the one calling the shots. "I'll brief you on the way. Let's go."

* * *

"So, let me get this straight: the wraiths are circling the city, searching for something. What?"

"I already told you: I don't know," Neji replied with gritted teeth, dodging a homeless man on the sidewalk and doing his best not to strangle Sasuke as they walked through one of the busier areas of the city. "My best guess is more recruits since they lost that member in their fight with us in Konoha. In a city like this one, there's always a few ghosts on the pre-wraith side; you just have to find them and push them over that boundary. That's one of the reasons why the turnover rate for the FIle Operator position here is so high."

In fact, Neji knew - though he didn't think it would be a good idea to tell Sasuke at this particular time - New York City was just about the worst place this could have happened in. If Seattle was the safest city on the continent - ghostwise, at least - because of the heavy involvement of the Hyuuga family, New York City was the exact opposite. It was the farthest major city from any area of heavy influence, plus one of the most crime-ridden and populated by ghosts. No one from the Hyuuga family went there if they could avoid it, and even the people stationed there tried to leave as soon as possible.

"Anyway," he continued as they paused briefly at a crosswalk before walking forward when it blinked to green, "I found them, and that's that. Now we're going to do a little more in depth scouting, but that _is all_. We don't want to get caught like last time."

"Holy shit, no. That was terrifying."

"Then we are agreed. You had your turn organizing this last time, now let me take the lead. We're doing it right this time. No mistakes."

"Al… alright."

Neji pulled up short and turned to glare at Sasuke, who had stopped several paces back. "And what does that mean?"

Wincing a little at the ice in Neji's eyes, Sasuke shrugged. "Can I… add a condition?"

"What?" Irritation laced Neji's tone as he snapped at Sasuke, grabbing his arm and pulling him forward to avoid the pointed glares they were getting for obstructing the flow of foot traffic.

"Can we… take care of it ourselves again? Not call for backup?"

Neji couldn't help it; his jaw dropped. "And whyever not? It's not like we're trying to protect anybody this time!"

"But what if we are?"

Neji's eyes narrowed. He tugged Sasuke off the main sidewalk through the first gate he found, which lead to a section of Central Park, then pulled him onto the grass so they weren't blocking traffic anymore. "Explain. And fast."

"Okay." Sasuke took a deep breath. "Here's what I'm thinking: the only people who know we fought the wraiths in Konoha are us, correct?"

"Correct."

" _Wrong._ " Sasuke squeezed his hands into fists. "It's us… and the wraiths."

Abruptly, Neji's gaze widened as what Sasuke was getting at suddenly hit him. "Shit!"

"My thoughts exactly. It would be laughably easy for us to get caught in our lie if anyone else were involved in this."

"But there are other Hyuuga in New York; they'll sense the energy as soon as we start fighting. We won't be able to hide from them."

"Then we'll cover." Sasuke was speaking desperately now, his fists shaking. "Say we got caught off-guard, that there wasn't enough time to call for backup-"

"Sasuke." Neji cut the younger man off with a hand on his arm. "This is getting too elaborate! We couldn't take down five wraiths on our own the first time, and we sure as hell can't do it now! We didn't even win last time, if you remember: the wraiths gave up, and the only reason they left as a party of four instead of five was because they killed one of their own members themselves. Your little toy phantom isn't here this time, so why can't we just take the low chance that we might get caught in a lie instead of the almost certain choice that we're going to get killed?"

Sasuke's gaze shifted downwards, unable to meet Neji's as he mumbled, "Because if they ever found out, they'd track down Naruto and… and…"

 _And force him to fade_ , Neji finished in his mind. With a sigh, he said, "Does it really matter? All those ghosts are living on borrowed time anyway; they died years ago, and should have faded naturally before now."

Before Neji could react, Sasuke's hands were gripping his collar and he found his back slammed into a tree as the man in front of him snarled with hard eyes. "You take that back!"

"No! I won't! What we found in Konoha was wrong, abnormal, against everything we've ever been taught was right! Why are you still fighting to keep them - to keep him - alive?"

"Because-! Because…" Sasuke's hands went limp at Neji's collar, and his face lost its hues of anger as he lowered it. "Because I love him," he admitted.

Out of all the possible answers Neji was expecting, this one wasn't even on his radar. He almost laughed until he caught the expression on Sasuke's face.

"Jesus, you're serious."

"Of course I'm serious!" Sasuke glared him directly in the eye again. "And what about you and Shikamaru, huh?"

Neji's heart suddenly thumped harder in his breast, and he hoped Sasuke wouldn't be able to see the blush starting to creep along his cheekbones- or if he did, that he would mistake it for a flush of anger. Had he figured out what had happened earlier in the bathroom after all? "What about him?"

"I know you two were getting cozy together back in Konoha, with all those chess matches! Shikamaru even came up to me after you left and asked where you were! Did you think I hadn't noticed? I don't think I'm the only one who'd be upset if they dropped the spectral equivalent of an atomic bomb on them!"

 _That would be true,_ Neji thought, _if Shikamaru was actually in Konoha right now_. But he wisely chose to keep his mouth shut. At least that had answered his question about whether Sasuke had figured out what they had done that morning once and for all.

"That's beside the point," he finally said. "I'm talking about us dying here, Sasuke. I know enough to put my own life ahead of someone who's already dead."

"I guess that's where you and I differ, then," Sasuke said quietly, stepping away from Neji and dropping his hands to the side. "Because I don't know enough."

"Jesus," Neji whispered under his breath again, placing his palm over his eyes long enough for him to think of a response. None came, so he just sighed and let his shoulders sag.

"Regardless of what our final plan is, we still have to do the scouting, so why don't we put this conversation away and pick it up again later-?"

Suddenly, Sasuke was on him again, pressing a hand over his mouth to cut off his words. Neji struggled against his for a few seconds before finally throwing him off. "What the hell, Sas-?!"

"Shhhhh!" Sasuke begged desperately with wide eyes, and the shock on his face alone was enough to quiet Neji- for now. He shut up, and Sasuke gestured behind him. "Do those two look familiar to you?"

Neji turned his head slowly, trying to be unobtrusive. There were a dozen people in the vicinity of where Sasuke had gestured, including several who were giving them strange looks and wide berths. "Who?" He hissed.

"There!" Sasuke's hand came past his nose, pointing to two people a little ways off.

Though Neji could only see them in profile, he could tell they were both men, wearing full suits, but solid black fancy suits as opposed to the slightly more casual tan suit Neji was wearing. (He'd never thought he'd think that, that someone was better dressed than him. WHat was the world coming to.) Both were tall, though one was so tall that he dwarfed even the slightly-taller-than-average man next to him. The taller one was also muscled to the point where he looked almost comical stuffed in his suit, and his hand was resting on the elbow of the shorter man as they walked, as if to guide him. They both looked happy and relaxed, even laughing a bit as the taller man reached up and adjusted the pair of sunglasses perched on the shorter man's nose and brushed a fallen lock of his slicked-back hair away from his face.

"What about them?"

But before Sasuke could respond, the shorter man turned slightly, giving the pair a straight look at his face, and Neji felt Sasuke stiffen next to him before a growl of anger ripped out of him and he charged at the pair. Neji was too shocked to stop him, and he only reacted when Sasuke was almost upon them, starting after him in a vain attempt to stop- whatever he was planning to do. His mind supplied the information almost subconsciously that the shorter man's hair was the exact same shade as Sasuke's a half second before the Uchiha punched the man in the face without warning, sending the sunglasses he had been wearing flying and revealing-

Oh. _Oh._

Well, this was going to be an awkward family reunion.


	22. A Quiet Request

Here we go again! And the cliffhanger hangs on even longer, because now we're switching perspective! But don't worry; the resolution is coming soon.

Good to hear from you again, SoraROCK! Good to know you're enjoying it!

And I am so glad you enjoyed the last two chapters, Falainakorna! The brain frying is what I'm going for! If you liked that, just wait until see what's I've got planned for a few chapters from now ;)

Happy reading! Addi out!

* * *

Moegi sighed again as she stared at the message on her phone. It was from Neji, and no matter how many times she reread it, it still didn't make any more sense.

 _I'm going out of town for a few days. I don't know when I'll be back. I may not make it to the gig on Saturday. I'm sorry. Would you do me a favor and keep tabs on Hinata for a bit? But please don't tell her I asked you to._

First he tells her that been getting frisky with some guy, then he tells her that he's being forced to marry someone, then he insults her right to her face and storms off, then he announces he might not make the gig, and follows it all up with asking for a favor? Some people just had no sense of tact, she surmised as she shook her head. It was a good thing she liked Hinata. Maybe even more than she liked Neji.

She quickly screenshotted Neji's message and sent it to a group text with Konohamaru and Udon, though not the one Hinata was in.

Udon's reply was instantaneous and predictable: _He's going to skip the gig? Whatever he's doing better be important._

Konohamaru's reply was almost as instantaneous, and far more predictable: _He wants us to take care of the Angel!? Why did he ask only you?_

 _That's cause he didn't want you to freak her out, numbskull_ , Moegi sent back.

A few seconds later, her phone pinged as Konohamaru responded, then kept pinging as he kept adding things to his statement.

 _I would not freak her out!_

 _I would be a perfect gentleman!_

 _I bet I could take care of her_

 _I mean, not in a creepy way_

 _But, like, in a friendly way_

 _She's just too perfect_

 _We noticed,_ was Udon's dry way of stopping the flow of Konohamaru's gushing about Hinata- which the two of them had already fallen victim to several times before. _Any idea on what we can do?_

 _We could ask her if she wants to hang out or something,_ Moegi suggested.

 _Yeah, but where? She doesn't get out much, remember. I bet being in public or around a lot people is uncomfortable for her._

Moegi blinked disbelievingly at her screen and the message marked from Konohamaru containing deliberate thoughtfulness. _I can't believe all that occurred to your tiny brain,_ she couldn't help but send back to him.

His response was quick. _I told you I could be a gentleman for her!_

 _What about a movie?_ Udon quickly interjected before their insult train could get too far off the tracks.

 _In a crowded movie theater? Did you even hear what I said?_

 _But it would be dark. And quiet,_ Udon reasoned.

 _And we don't know if that would be worse!_

 _Konohamaru, I think you're getting a little too protective of her._

 _That's what_ you _think! I can still remember Neji's death glare!_

Moegi felt a shiver go up her spine. She, too, remembered Neji's death glare, even if it hadn't been pointed at her.

 _Okay, so forget the movie theater,_ she interjected quickly. _What if we just brought a bunch of DVDs and had a movie marathon at one of our houses? We could order pizza and even have a sleepover. It'd be casual, easy for her. And she could get more comfortable around us._

 _That… might work,_ Konohamaru admitted. _I'll ask my mom if we can use my place. It's the biggest, and we have a couple of air mattresses we can blow up._

 _Sounds good._

The dot saying Konohamaru was online disappeared for a few minutes, then reappeared again. _She says okay! And she'll even buy the pizza for us as long as we clean up after ourselves!_

 _Perfect!_ Moegi exclaimed.

 _Now we just have to ask Hinata_ , Udon jumped in for the first time in several minutes.

For a moment, no one sent anything. Then Moegi held her breath as three dots jumped up under Konohamaru's name, muttering in her head, _three… two… one…_

 _I WANT TO ASK HER!_ Came Konohamaru's overexuberent response, as it always did when Hinata was concerned, followed by a string of further overexuberent responses.

 _I mean, it is my house, so it makes sense that I should ask her_

 _And make sure she knows what she should bring and stuff_

 _Do you think she's ever been to a sleepover before?_

 _OH MY GOD YOU GUYS what if she hasn't and this is her first time?!_

 _WHAT IF SHE'S NERVOUS!?_

Finally fed up with his tirade, Moegi typed: _KONOHAMARU! Will you just shut the fuck up for one second please? And quit talking like that! It sounds like you're planning something dirty._

There was a few seconds before a more mild response came back. _Sorry._

But another response soon followed, ruining the first's effect: _But I still want to ask her._

Moegi pinched the bridge of her nose. Sometimes the youngest member of their little group was hard to handle. _Then ask her. Report back to us when you're done and we can all discuss it in the group text with her._

 _Rodger!_

Moegi sighed as she put her phone down. As the eldest (and therefore probably the most responsible) one in their group, she was going to have to oversee this and make sure Hinata made it out without having a heart attack, for the sake of all of their healths. Neji's death glare was not a happy memory in her brain.

* * *

Hinata was supposed to be studying when her phone went off. She glanced at it longingly before turning her head resolutely back to her books. It buzzed again shortly after, and still she stared at the worksheet in front of her. When it went off for the third time, she realized that she hadn't actually been doing any of the math in front of her in the past five minutes, just listening to the buzz of her phone on the table across the room and wondering what the messages contained, so she gave up and stood up to check it.

 _From: Konohamaru,_ the notification read.

 _Hey, Hinata! So me and the others, Udon and Moegi, were thinking about having a little bit of a get-together in a few days, and we wanted you to come too so we could get to know you better! In person, that is; I know we've been texting a lot. Are you interested in coming?_

The second message read: _Oh, I almost forgot to tell you what we're doing! Everyone's coming to my place and we're going to all watch movies together on Wednesday. You could tell us what kind of movies you like. If you're interested._

The last one read: _And it's going to be a sleepover! Forgot that part too. I have an air mattress that you could sleep on if you want to stay over too. But no pressure! You don't have to if it makes you uncomfortable! But Moegi will be there too so you won't be the only girl so it doesn't sound weird that I'm inviting you to sleep over at my house._

As she was reading the messages, Hinata's phone buzzed a fourth time in her hand.

 _That was a lame invitation. I'm sorry._

A shiver went down Hinata's spine. She'd never been invited anywhere before, especially to stay the night, and she couldn't help but feel trepidation at the thought. At the same time, though, she felt a thrill of excitement run through her stomach. Perhaps this was a chance to prove her own strength to herself, that she wasn't going to spend her entire life as a shut-in with no contact to the outside world. That she could make plans and follow through on them without letting her shyness get in the way. That she could have friends.

And these people were Neji's friends. They wouldn't hurt her.

Besides, Konohamaru was really sweet.

Hinata started typing a response to accept the invitation when she suddenly remembered that she while she was allowed to go anywhere she pleased when she wasn't in a lesson or during her designated study time - though she hardly ever used that privilege since she didn't like to go out - she wasn't allowed to spend the night anywhere outside of her home without permission from her primary guardian, since she wasn't legally an adult yet. A little disappointed - and a smidge relieved, though she was ashamed to admit it - she changed her response.

 _Thank you for your thoughtful invitation, Konohamaru. I would love to come watch movies with you and your friends. However, I do have a curfew and am not allowed to stay over without permission from my father, so I will have to ask him first. I should be able to at least come in the evening, though._

A tiny smile crossed her face as she reread the messages Konohamaru had sent to her, almost as adorably bumbling her own shy nervousness. _And I don't like scary movies,_ she added.

 _Well, I could have figured that out myself,_ Konohamaru texted back almost instantaneously, followed by a winking face made out of a semicolon and one half of a pair of parentheses that Hinata had recently learned was called an "emoticon", or emoji for short. _It sucks about your curfew. Tell me what your dad says when you ask him._

 _I will._

Taking a deep breath, Hinata closed her phone and locked it, then turned back to her math. She had eleven more problems to do before dinner, where she could ask her father for permission to attend the sleepover. It was just enough time to gather her courage, and just enough time to stew over it until she freaked out.

* * *

Dinner at the Hyuuga residence was always a quiet affair. People concentrated on their food instead of chatting, so when someone did speak, it always came as a shock. Today, several more distant members of the family who were in town for a few days had joined them, as well as a few cousins that lived in the compound with Hinata and her father and normally ate with them. Their presence caused a bubble of nervousness in Hinata's chest that made it impossible for her to eat; she'd wanted to ask her father permission to stay the night at Konohamaru's on Wednesday, and she was too embarrassed to do it in front of the visitors.

Poking moodily at the mashed potatoes on her plate, Hinata resolved to ask him later that night, when they were in private. Just after she made the resolution, however, a sharp voice rang through the air, causing her to let out a tiny _eep!_ and drop her fork.

"Hinata, dear, what's gotten into you? DId you have something you wanted to talk about?"

Hinata's fork landed on the floor with a clatter just after her father finished speaking, and she froze in embarrassment, her fingers trembling and her cheeks turning a mortified shade of red. Her breath coming in terrified pants, she forced herself to lean down and pick up the fork before stuttering a response.

"N-n-no, I-I-I-"

"Are you sure?" He asked, and Hinata could feel his sharply perceptive gaze on her, cutting through her feeble attempt at a lie.

"M-m-mayb-be l-later," she admitted quietly, hoping her father wouldn't interrogate her at the dinner table in front of guests any further. Unfortunately, she had no such luck.

"I'm sure I could answer any question you need now. What is it?"

"Oh-h, um-m…" Hinata searched for the right words to say, the speech she'd prepared earlier going straight out of her mind, and floundered desperately in her humiliation as everyone's eyes landed on her. "W-Wed-nesday… I-I… um… invit-ted… m-m-movie… g-go… s-sl-leep-p-p… can-n… pl-please-"

"Just spit it out, Hinata!" Her father called from the head of the table, a trace of irritation in his voice.

She jumped at the harsh sound, galvanized into action by his words, and managed to get it all out in one big rush: "Some friends invited me to a sleepover on Wednesday we're going to watch movies can I go please!"

The sound of the words she'd just said, louder than she'd ever spoken at the table before - and, miraculously, without any stuttering - rang in the air around Hinata, and she wanted to curl up under the table and die so the stares would stop. She knew a hundred things must be going through the heads of their guests, from wondering why she was such a stuttering mess to _Hinata has friends?_ Her father put down his knife and fork beside his plate with a clink and steepled his fingers, regarding her over the top of them.

"You know you have lessons on Thursday," was all he said, and Hinata felt a huge lump of tension drain out of her middle as her fear of being publicly chastised for speaking too loudly at the dinner table was proven false.

"Y-yes, F-Father. I w-will make s-sure I c-come home in t-time for them-m. If I am-m allowed-d t-to go."

"And your… friends," her father continued as if she hadn't even spoken. "Do they not have lessons as well?"

Hinata jerked, her fingers trembling on the tablecloth. That question was a veiled enquiry as to whether her new friends were from the Hyuuga family or not, which they obviously weren't. "N-no, they d-do not-t. They are on-n… summer b-break-k."

"I see." Quiet contemplation overtook her father's face. "And where did you meet these… friends?"

A lump formed in Hinata's throat that she had to push down to speak past. "N-Neji… Neji introduced m-me."

"So they are friends of Neji's? Aren't they too old for you, then?"

"Th-they are younger than h-him, so he thought-t I m-might g-get along with them. I l-like them," she added suddenly, looking up to meet her father's gaze before shying away again at the ice she found there.

"I see." His voice wasn't displeased, but it wasn't pleased either. "And what is it you said they want to do?"

"W-watch m-movies, and um… p-pizza."

"That's it?"

Hinata looked up in surprise. "Should th-there be m-more? Th-that's all he s-said."

"He?" Now displeasure actively dripped from her father's voice. "You mean to tell me you're asking permission to sleep at a _boy's_ house? And one who is not related to you?"

Jumping at the sudden anger in her father's tone, Hinata started hyperventilating and quickly stuffed both hands under the table to hide their shaking. "I-! S-sorry, I d-didn't think-! Does it m-matter?"

"Does it matter?!" This time, it was one of the guests that had spoken, and Hinata flinched away from her tone dripping with outrage. "Hiashi, how have you been raising your children if she has no concept of right and wrong when it comes to the opposite gender, especially since it's there's not much time until- well, you know."

 _No, I don't,_ Hinata wanted to say, but the words froze in her throat. She was too afraid to move, even breathe.

Her father sighed at the head of the table. "This is not your place, Lorelei. You of all people should know how sheltered she is." He turned to Hinata again. "How many people are supposed to be there? And tell me their genders as well."

Hinata's mouth opened but nothing came out, and for a second she thought she'd lost her ability to speak. Then her bottom lip trembled and air managed to squeak past the lump in her throat. "I… I.. t-two boys, and-d… and one other g-girl. And-d the h-host's mom-m," she added quickly at the end in a desperate attempt to make the numbers seem more even.

But it looked like it didn't make the woman at the other end of the table any more impressed, and she stabbed a piece of meat with more vehemence than as really needed and waved it in Hinata's direction. "A one-to-one ratio then, the most perfect for mischief. You obviously can't let her go, Hiashi, not with the odds against her like that! She'll be lucky if she makes it back with her virtue intact!"

"Lorelei," Hinata's father said in a quiet tone, but the guest carried on right through his warning.

"I keep saying, you can't trust those common boys. Pigs, all of them. No sense of tact or breeding at all. I'd never let my own daughter even socialize with them."

"Lorelei-"

"That's why we need more people like your daughter marrying good, well-mannered Hyuuga boys like-"

"Lorelei!"

That shut the woman up, and Hinata got the feeling that her father was giving her some kind of look, but she couldn't see it through the unshed tears in her eyes. Standing up from the table so abruptly that she almost knocked over her chair, she muttered a quick, "S-sorry for the t-trouble. I didn't r-really w-want-t to g-go anyway," before running out of the room before her tears could fall.

The rest of the room watched her go, her father sighing as the door slammed behind her.

"You really should keep better control over her," the woman at the other end of the table said, taking a sip of her drink to punctuate her sentence.

"You know what, Lorelei," Hiashi said, standing up and throwing his napkin on the table. "You have no right to speak to me like that. You know Hinata's condition, you know what happened to her; you know how delicately we must proceed, and I will not allow you to scare her out of her mind like that!"

The woman's eyes flashed as round as saucers. "You mean, she doesn't know yet?"

"Of course she doesn't know yet!" At the rest of the table's reaction to his bark, Hiashi passed a hand over his eyes to calm himself before speaking again. "I'm leaving the table. Enjoy your meal, everyone."

"But why?" The woman called after him as he went to leave.

"Why?" Hiashi turned back to fix her with an icy glare. "Because in the twelve years since Hinata has developed that stutter, this is the first time I've heard her ask for something for herself of her own volition, and I will be _damned_ if I let it end like this." He paused, then inclined his head toward the rest of the table. "Good evening."

And then he swept out the door behind his daughter.

* * *

Hinata ran to her room and slammed the door shut behind her - but quietly; she wasn't a barbarian - just before the first tears began to fall. She was glad she made it; it would have been even more humiliating if that horrid woman had seen her cry. But she hadn't, she was in the safety of her room now, and she could allow herself to sob as loud as she wanted- provided that she did it into a pillow to muffle the sounds. It was one of only two places Hinata had found where she could cry without rebuke, the other being in Neji's arms.

Throwing herself face down on her bed, Hinata stuffed her face into her pillow just in time to muffle a scream. It was a soft scream, but a scream nonetheless, and compared to the quiet voice that normally came out of her, shockingly loud. She continued crying without rest, violent sobs wracking her body with the force of seizures. Before long, her pillow was uncomfortably damp against her face, but she didn't dare remove it for fear someone would hear her unmuffled cries.

It was just so…! So…! Frustrating! Humiliating! Unfair! Each word came with another hunch of Hinata's shoulders. The one time she had finally got up the courage to ask for something for herself, and she had been shot down mercilessly! That woman - she was a distant aunt of Hinata's, though she had no clue the exact relation - had taken her innocent request and made it seem like some… some… some perverted getaway! Shame rippled through Hinata at the memory of the accusation of the perfect ratio for "mischief", causing her hands to clench tighter into her pillow. Of course she hasn't been thinking that! How could she? She didn't even know enough to tell that sleeping over at a boy's house was any different from sleeping over at a girl's!

A knock at the door suddenly pulled Hinata out of her wallowing. "Hinata? Can I come in, sweetie?"

The sound of her father's voice, muffled through the door, was surprising enough to launch Hinata into a sitting position. When she didn't respond right away, he knocked again.

"I know you're in there. Please, just let me in?"

Hinata quickly pulled her knees up to her chest and braced her back against the beadboard of her bed, then pulled her pillow into her lap. "The d-door's unl-locked," she said just loud enough that the words would carry to her father, then hid her face in the pillow when she heard the handle turn so he wouldn't see her tear-stained cheeks and red eyes.

It was a futile exercise, though, because she knew he could tell she had been crying from the second he walked through the door by her hiccuping breaths.

She felt the bed settle as he sat down next to her, then a surprisingly gentle hand fell on top of her head. It patted through strands of her hair for several seconds before he spoke without warning.

"Lorelei was out of line."

Hinata stiffened, but otherwise made no physical indication that she heard him.

"She's always been an outspoken, obstinate woman," he continued. "If I'd known she'd rip into you like that, I would never have made you ask in front of everyone."

This time, Hinata allowed her body to fall slack, the pillow slipping from her death grip and her head lolling to the side to rest on her father's shoulder.

"There we are," he said, brushing her bangs away from her forehead. "There's my sunshine."

Hinata managed a watery smile before tilting her head to her bangs covered her eyes again. "S-sorry, Father. I sh-should have known-n what was appropriate. I d-don't need-d to g-go."

"Nonsense." He poked her cheek. "I was about to say yes when Lorelei interrupted. Of course, I still have a couple of questions and plenty of reservations, but-"

Hinata finally pulled herself from her shock enough to pull back and look at her father. "You w-would l-let me g-go?" Then she realized what she'd done and instantly went red-faces. "S-s-sorry, I didn't-t m-mean to in-inter-inter-"

"It's okay, Hinata." He tousled her hair with soft fingers. "What I want to know the most, though, is the identity of the people who can convince you to even want to stay away from home. Who is this mysterious man who invited you into his home?"

His tone was playful, and if there was any steel hidden underneath, Hinata couldn't sense it. She knew, though, that while he had implied consent for her to go, he still wanted to approve her choice of associates.

Silently, Hinata reached past her father to grab her phone from its perch on the nearby table, then flicked through the few photos the trio had sent her of themselves. There weren't much, but sometimes a picture would crop up in the group text, or in a private message, like the first photo Udon had sent her of Konohamaru's disbelieving face. That picture wasn't very flattering, however, so she moved on to the only photo she had where all three were in the shot, a rather silly photo at a beach where Moegi had pulled an unenthusiastic Udon and an over-enthusiastic Konohamaru into building a giant sand castle, and all three were standing around it rather proudly. She handed the phone to her father, who took it and surveyed the photo for a few seconds before looking back to Hinata with raised eyebrows.

"Do these people have names?"

Hinata leaned over so she could look at the photo with him and see the order in which they were standing. "Udon-n, M-Moegi, and K-Kono- Kono- Konoham-maru." She stumbled over the last name as its length fought her timid tongue.

"And which one is it that invited you to his house?"

"Kono- Konohamaru." There; it came out better that time. "This one." She pointed to the right face, his eyes closed from the bright glare of the sun off the sand and his mouth curled upwards in an inviting grin.

"I see." Her father took the phone back and stared at the boy's face, then tapped on the screen absentmindedly. The pressure caused the picture to accidentally swipe to the side, revealing the next one in her album.

This one was also of Konohamaru, but in a vastly different setting. He was wearing semi-formal attire, dress pants and a button down shirt, all black except for a violently orange tie, and playing his trumpet with a arched back, his bell pointed up to the ceiling. The strong light from above glinted off the metal instrument, causing a slight lense flare that Konohamaru had called "artistic" when he'd sent the photo to her. Sweat beaded up on his forehead from the heat of the lights, and it was obvious that he was concentrating hard.

Hinata's father regarded the picture for a few seconds, his head cocked to the side. "This is him as well, correct?"

"Y-yes," Hinata squeaked.

"I see." He stared at the photo for a few seconds longer, then sharply nodded. "Very well. You may go- as long as you promise it won't affect your lessons."

Hinata could hardly believe her ears. He was letting her go that easily? A thousand questions thundered through her mind, but the only thing that made it out of her mouth was, "Y-yes, Father."

"Good." Hinata's father stood to go, then abruptly turned back. "I would like to meet him, though. This fellow. Konohamaru, was it? Perhaps I can drop you off, see him in person."

"I- I'm sure he wouldn't m-mind," Hinata gasped.

"Excellent, then." He ruffled Hinata's hair one last time, then walked to the door. "Good night, Hinata."

The door closed behind him with a quiet click. For a long moment, Hinata was frozen, unable to think or do anything. Then a smile broke over her face still blotchy from tears, and she hugged her pillow to her body as she sent a text to Konohamaru to let him know she could come, even adding a small smiley face at the end.

 _Guess what, Konohamaru! My father said I can stay over! I can't wait for Wednesday :)_


	23. A Almost Novel-Worthy Coincidence

Hey! Another chapter- and the resolution to the cliffhanger!

Glad to know you're looking forward to it, SoraROCK- hope it doesn't disappoint!

You know, Falainakorna, I never really considered KonoHina either before I started writing this, but somehow the characters were both in the right place at the right time and I thought, well, might as well go for it! Glad you're liking it! I was trying to make it relatable since it's such a rare pairing. Enjoy the new chapter!

* * *

Neji reached Sasuke just at the moment he was rearing back for another punch and tackled him from behind, bringing him to the ground. The man he had punched was hunched over, hiding his face - and the briefly glimpsed scars that decorated it - after his sunglasses had been knocked off, and the man who had been with him suddenly reared up in front of them, his too-tight suit jacket doing nothing to hide his flexing biceps.

"Who the hell are you?" He snarled low in his chest, and danger bells immediately started ringing in Neji's head.

"Sorry, I think my companion might have mistaken your friend for someone else," he gasped, desperately trying to hold Sasuke's flailing limbs to the ground.

All the while, his captive kept shouting, "Let me up, you asshole! Neji! I wanna punch him! I didn't mistake him; it's him, I know it is! Nejiiiii-!"

"Shut up, Sasuke!" Neji finally snapped, grabbing the back of Sasuke's head and slamming it into the dirt to cut him off. Sasuke finally stopped flailing, so Neji took that as his cue to stand up again, though he settled his foot in the center of his back to keep him down, just in case. "I'm dreadfully sorry about that-"

"No," the previously sunglassed man said quietly, standing up with a hand across his scarred and empty eye sockets. "No, he's right. He does know me. And I probably deserved that."

Of course he did; even Neji could tell who the man in front of him was, and he'd never met or seen a picture of him before. But he must have had a reason for running and cutting contact with Sasuke; would seeing him again conflict with whatever his new life was? Fixing a solid stare on the man, Neji asked quietly, "Are you sure? You must be busy, and we don't want to disturb two such _strangers_ as yourself." He emphasized the word strangers, hoping that the man would get his offer for what it was: an out.

By his slow nod, Neji knew the man understood his implications, but his small, sad smile said that he wasn't going to take the proffered out. "It's okay," he said in a tone that tried to be jovial, but fell just short of succeeding. "I know I don't have the most spotless record when it come to these kinds of things, but I really do care for my family. And as much as I needed to escape where I was before, there are parts of my old life that I miss, and things I would redo if I could."

"Itachi…" the muscular man behind Itachi said quietly.

"It's okay, Kisame," Itachi replied just as quietly. "But… can you give me my sunglasses, please?"

The man Itachi had called Kisame reached for them without hesitation, sliding them back onto his nose with an expression that bordered on tenderness. His cover and confidence now restored, Itachi moved towards Sasuke, who was lying motionless on the ground, and crouched down before him. Neji removed his foot as he approached, allowing Sasuke to life his head up and stare directly at the face of his older brother.

Itachi reached blindly down until his fingers brushed up against Sasuke's forehead, then he smiled gently down at him. "Hey, little brother," he almost whispered. "I missed you."

Wetness swam in Sasuke's eyes, and though there was no way Itachi could have known about it, his expression automatically softened. Sasuke's shoulders stiffened as his hands clenched, and that was all the warning he gave before he launched himself at his older brother, knocking him backwards and landing both of them on the ground.

"Damn you, Itachi! Why the fuck did you leave me all alone? I trusted you, I _forgave_ you- how could you leave me? How could you leave me?" The last part was sobbed into Itachi's chest as Sasuke's fists beat futilely against his back. Itachi made no move to stop his brother's assault, just moved his arms to wrap around his waist and hold him close to his chest.

"Let go of me!" Sasuke screamed, though Neji noticed that he made no move to pull himself out of Itachi's embrace. "Don't touch me! I hate you!"

"I wish I could have told you I was leaving," Itachi said quietly to him.

"I don't care! You're selfish and I hate you!"

"It was the only way," he continued as if Sasuke hadn't spoken. "The plan was already in place. I had to go, and if I'd told you, Father would have known. He'd have stopped us."

"I could have kept it a secret!"

"And you would have tried, but neither one of us was ever good at lying to Father. It was a secret, Sasuke, and I didn't tell anybody."

"Except Kisame," Sasuke spat with surprising venom in his voice.

"Except Kisame," Itachi allowed. "But Kisame was the one protecting me, so I had to protect him in return."

"That's no excuse! You could have…! You could have…!" Sasuke gasped out, then his shoulders abruptly sagged and the blows he was raining down on his brother stopped. Looking like a small child, he clutched at Itachi and buried his face in his jacket. "I missed you, too," he whispered.

"There, there," Itachi said comfortingly, laying a gentle hand on the back of Sasuke's head. "It's alright now. I'm here."

Neji made eye contact with the overly muscular man - Kisame, if he remembered correctly - over the tops of the two brothers' heads. "Should we move this to a different location? I'd guess you'd like to avoid certain kinds of attention as much as we would." He glanced pointedly around them at the passersby who were giving them a little more attention then was warranted.

"You're quite right," he agreed amicably enough, despite his rough exterior. "Itachi?"

"If you could just… give us a minute?" He asked quietly, and Neji noticed that Sasuke's shoulders were shaking with silent sobs.

Kisame must have noticed too, because he gave a single curt nod. "Understood. When you're ready, we'll walk a bit and find a bench. I'd rather not bring them…" he trailed off expectantly, and Itachi picked up on whatever he was leaving unsaid.

"I agree."

Neji flicked his gaze between the two of them, taking in their pressed suits, Kisame's inexplicable build, and their situation. _They're involved with something illegal,_ he realized suddenly, though he easily kept the revelation off his face because it wasn't as surprising as it could have been. _Organized crime, most likely. That's how they escaped the hospital, how they've kept under the radar since then. They don't want us to know the specifics, though. I honestly don't blame them._

"Sasuke," he called bluntly. "We don't have time for this. We're on a job, remember? Get your reconciliation over with so we can get started."

That caught Itachi's attention. "Job? Hyuuga, are you?"

Neji started to nod until he realized that Itachi wouldn't be able to see it. "Yes," he said instead.

"I see." Itachi quickly patted the back of Sasuke's head. "Hey, Sasuke, do you think you can get up? I'm sure you and your Hyuuga partner have work to do, and I don't want to get you in trouble."

Sasuke mumbled something unintelligible against Itachi's chest, and Neji snorted at the same time. At the questioning tilt of Itachi's head, he explained, "This whole situation was a mess from the start. Quite honestly, running into you here is the least impressive thing that's happened so far. I doubt you could cause us any more trouble than we're already in."

Itachi's head tilted even further to the side. "How so?"

"It's… a very long story." Neji pointedly scuffed his feet against the ground. "Walk with us?"

Itachi turned his head to Kisame, who slowly nodded. "We have time."

* * *

Shikamaru drifted around the back alleyways of New York City, a shroud of shadow wrapped around him to hide his presence from all but the shrewdest of observers. He'd watched Neji and Sasuke leave the hotel earlier, safe from their prying eyes with his shadow cover, but had decided not to follow them in case he was discovered. The decision was wearing on him though, and every foot he traversed only made his more jittery. His fairy-boy was in the middle of something dangerous, and he wanted to help as best he could. He knew his assistance wouldn't be appreciated, though, so he was forced to remain silent and watch.

He hadn't felt this agitated since he'd sent his regiment off to fight their first battle without him.

Somehow, he doubted Neji would like the comparison.

Perhaps it would be better just to go back to Seattle and wait, as Neji had clearly wanted. But Shikamaru, used as he was to getting his way by manipulating the people around him, wasn't much for patience. He needed results, and soon. But how to get them?

So lost in his ponderings was Shikamaru that he didn't notice the danger until it was upon him. A low chuckle came swirling out of the dark in front of him, then a ghostly street thug materialized in his path, followed closely by two more behind the phantom in a three-point ambush. Smirking, the leader cracked his knuckles.

"Well, what do we have here? Someone wandered a little too far off the beaten path."

Shikamaru stared blankly at the ghost, unfazed. The trio were obviously low-class specters, doing in death what they had done in life before their untimely demises, but by their differing states of dress he could tell that they'd all died over an almost fifty-year span. That meant they couldn't be working together instinctively, because they never would have in life. They had to have some kind of mentor or boss. A local draugr, perhaps? Or maybe… a wraith, or a ghost with wraith potential?

Well, Shikamaru supposed, anything to kill the boredom. And perhaps he could help Neji in a roundabout way. If he was tracking the same wraiths from Konoha, there was really only reason they'd be in New York City: increasing their numbers. It would be rather hard to do that if someone else got to all their potentials first, now wouldn't it?

"I don't think he heard us, eh, boys?" One of the ghosts behind Shikamaru taunted. "Maybe he's dumb or somethin'."

"Yeah, or a cocky lil' bastard," the one in front jeered. "Come on, give us all your money now and we won't hurt ya."

The ghost next to him knocked him upside the head. "He ain't got no money on 'im, Squint, he's dead!"

"Oh, ain't that right. I forgot." A look of dawning understanding crossed the one called Squint's face. "I guess that means we'll just have to make him pay the price, eh, boys?"

Low, menacing chuckles echoed from all around Shikamaru, but he didn't even let his face react. People like these were so damn troublesome.

"Well? Got anything to say for yourself? Any… _last words_?" A spectral thug jeered.

Shikamaru barely gifted them with a tiny sigh. "I really hate the old New York accents," he muttered to himself.

The three ghosts stiffened. "What was that?!" The one called Squint bellowed, getting into position to charge Shikamaru. From behind him, he heard the sound of a switchblade being opened. "Get 'im, boys!"

The three specters rushed Shikamaru as one. He sighed as they approached, moving his head several inches to the side to avoid the first punch and then twisting his torso leisurely at a ninety degree angle to avoid the knife thrust from behind him. He really hated wasting his time on fights that were too easy. Not even wanting to bother with moving his body to fight back, Shikamaru called up a single thin shadow to dart around him like a whip.

It was all over in a few seconds. The three ghosts lay floating just above the ground, curled up on themselves around invisible injuries. Shikamaru couldn't help his upper lip curling in disgust; God, they were even weaker than he'd thought they would be.

A stony look on his countenance that left no room for argument, Shikamaru leaned down towards the shivering specters, who flinched away as he drew near. "I think that's enough of that. Take me to your Master. Now."

* * *

"...Are you sure that it's okay for us to be discussing this in front of…" Neji suddenly cut into his explanation, glancing to the side at the stoic and unmoving Kisame, who had been listening to their conversation with unblinking attention.

"Hmm?" Itachi tilted his head to the side, then seemed to pick up on Neji's reservations. "Oh, you mean Kisame? Yes, it's fine to talk in front of him. We've… well, we've had a few incidents with some spirits since we first met, so he's familiar with the topic already."

"But it's still a security issue, a potential for a code blue," Nji just barely managed to keep himself from hissing between closed teeth.

"So is telling me. Your point?"

Neji wanted to argue with him, but found that he could find no satisfactory arguments so he just sighed. "Very well. Anyway, that was what led us to New York. Now we're tracking the wraiths to get a little more information before we…" he glaced swiftly at Sasuke, who was still curled up against his brother's side as if he had no intention of ever letting go again. "Before we do something stupid and probably suicidal, like try to take them down on our own."

Sasuke mumbled something against Itachi's side that Neji couldn't understand, and he decided he didn't care enough to try and decode it. Rubbing the top of his younger brother's head thoughtfully, Itachi bit at the inside of his lip.

"It sounds like you've gotten yourself into quite the pickle. How do you plan on getting yourself out of it?"

"If I knew that, the problem would already be fixed."

"Hm." Itachi tilted his head to the side, looking rather impressed. "I can appreciate that kind of attitude. I was that kind of man myself, once. I'd like to say that I still am, but… I'm in a different situation now."

"Can you help us?" Sasuke suddenly asked, lifting his head from his brother's side so the words rang out clear into the air.

Itachi stiffened slowly at the words, the effect traveling from his feet up to his face like a full-body transformation into stone. "I- I can't," he whispered, an ache in his voice that hadn't been there before. "You know why I can't, Sasuke."

"But you're out here, you're living your life! Aren't you recovered? Aren't you healed?"

"If only… if only that was the case." Itachi barely managed to flash a weak smile. "As much as I've healed from before, Sasuke, there are parts of me that will never be the same again and not all those parts are on the outside. I _can't_ be near a wraith ever again, no matter the reason; I couldn't even handle a pre-wraith draugr without… well, I just couldn't handle it. So please, Sasuke, don't ask me. I'm sorry, but I can't help you any more than I can still read."

"Sorry," Sasuke murmured, looking away from his brother's face and the sunglasses that stared to the side of his without seeing him. "I didn't think- I shouldn't have asked."

"Don't beat yourself up about it." Itachi ruffled his hair with a smile. "It's not your fault."

"Itachi," Kisame suddenly interrupted in a low voice. "I hate to cut this short, but we need to go soon if we're going to meet Raiga on time."

A look of disappointment flashed over his face, and Neji noticed that the hand resting on Sasuke's head tightened a little. "So soon?"

"We should have left five minutes ago."

"Damn. I suppose, then." Itachi winced as he started to disentangle himself from Sasuke, who clutched at him desperately.

"Don't leave yet!"

"I'm sorry, Sasuke, but I have to go." He leaned down and pressed a swift kiss to the top of Sasuke's head, using the subsequent softening of his grip to pull himself free.

"But we can see each other again, right?" He asked desperately, reaching for his older brother but stopping when he saw the guilt on his face. "Itachi? I won't tell Father where you are, so we can still see each other? Right? Or maybe we could talk on the phone, or write each other letters, or even visit whenever I'm in New York? Right? Right?!" His voice grew increasingly louder as panic infused it. "Say something, Itachi!"

"I'm sorry, Sasuke," Itachi finally said, standing up and looking over the top of his brother's head with vacant sunglasses. "But this is the last you'll see of me. It was a miracle, to be able to meet you again, to say the goodbye that I wasn't able to say before. But this what that is, Sasuke: a goodbye. I'm no longer your brother. I have a new name now, a new identity… a new family to protect as best I can. You mean so much to me… but it will be better for both of us if we forget this ever happened."

"But why?!" Sasuke begged, tears starting to free-flow down his face again.

"Ah, Sasuke," Itachi murmured, sliding his hand down his brother's face until his thumb could brush away the tears on his cheek. "You're still so young, so naive. You don't understand how the world works. Everything won't just work out because we want it too. Sometimes, things have to be sacrificed."

"I'm not a child anymore," Sasuke muttered petulantly.

"Of course you aren't." Itachi's smile said that he was humoring him, though gently. "The fact is, you deserve better than me, Sasuke. All I ever did was hurt you, even my misguided attempts to do the right thing. I can never forgive myself for the things I did, and you shouldn't have to either. Find someone who deserves your forgiveness - and your love - more than I do."

He turned to go, leaving Sasuke sitting on the park bench, his face frozen in shock. Instantly, Kisame was at his elbow, guiding his steps to a surer path. As Neji watched, first one tear broke through the damp barrier Sasuke had just managed to stop crying through, then another, and before long, scalding tracks were forming thick and fast on his cheeks. The suited pair made their way down the path, but Itachi stumbled on nothing just as they passed Neji, causing him to grab Neji's arm and hold onto it to regain his balance.

Or, at least, Neji realized, in a semblance of trying to regain his balance.

Itachi hissed a string of numbers under his breath that Neji barely caught, then the instructions, "I may not be able to help you on this, but if you ever need an extra pair of ears on the ground, I might be of some assistance. Do not call it unless you absolutely have to, destroy any records of the number after your job here is done, and _do not_ let Sasuke know you have it. Did you catch the whole thing the first time?"

Neji nodded breathlessly before he remembered that Itachi couldn't see him. Just as he opened his mouth to tell him that he had, however, Itachi gave a sharp node and pulled back, his face instantly relaxing into a more casual smile.

"Sorry about that. I trip over the littlest things now. Well, good luck on your hunt. Look after Sasuke for me."

"Yes," Neji managed normally enough, and had to stop himself from adding an instinctual _sir_ to the response. Even without his sight, Itachi's presence when he got serious still demanded respect.

Itachi nodded one more time and looked like he wanted to say something more, but Kisame gave a gentle squeeze to his arm and instead he looked away, sharpening his shoulders and lengthening his stride. Neji watched him go for a moment before he turned back to Sasuke, who was still sitting on the bench with a frozen, tearstained face. It appeared that he hadn't noticed the brief exchange that had passed between Neji and his older brother.

Speaking of which…

Neji pulled out his phone, unlocking it to reveal his contacts list, and started typing in the number, only to erase it before he got halfway through and slowly lower the phone again. It wouldn't do to have any permanent record of the number anywhere the elders could get hold of it. Reaching into an inside pocket of his suit jacket, he pulled out a pen and an innocuous scrap of paper he always kept tucked about his person in case of emergencies, scribbled down the number, and tucked it safely and securely back into his pocket before making his way to the traumatized young man on the bench.

A muscle twitched in Neji's face as he gazed down at Sasuke. He didn't handle emotional people well, and crying people were even worse, with Hinata as the sole exception. Her tears he could manage. Shifting from foot to foot irritably, he barked, "We don't have time for this, Sasuke. I know you're upset, but we have a job to do. Either snap out of it and help me, or I'm sending in for different backup and you can take your changes with your little pet phantom."

That got Sasuke's attention, and he hunched his shoulders and hid his face in his sleeve as Negi stared at him with gruff impatience. For a few seconds, it looked like he wasn't going to respond, and Neji opened his mouth to snap at him for a second time, but then Sasuke took a deep, shaky breath, dragged his sleeve across his face to remove the majority of the tears clinging to it, and stood up, giving Neji a watery approximation of a smile.

"I'm fine. Let's do this."

* * *

The ghost who called himself the Master of the trio of specters who had ambushed Shikamaru was pitifully weak, a disappointment like his subordinates. He appeared to be a draugr of some little skill, hiding out in some abandoned apartment building that had burnt to the ground years ago and was no longer hospitable for humans to live in, but too expensive for the low-income area to fix. However, Shikamaru had had no chance to verify his guess, because he'd dissolved into a black hole of nothingness before vanishing entirely as soon as the first blow had fallen. Insurmountably weak. Shikamaru gave a scathing snort as he kicked aside the few corporeal remnants the draugr had left behind, including a lit cigarette that he stamped out on the ground. The building had already been gutted by fire oce; it didn't need the misfortune of burning to the ground a second time.

The three specters who had led him to the draugr groveled on the ground behind him, prostrating themselves as close to the floor as they could get in an attempt to have him overlook them. They had no such luck, however, as Shikamaru turned around and fixed them with a piercing glare.

"You work for me now. No buts."

"Y-yes, M-M-Master," the one the others had referred to as 'Squint' earlier barely managed to stutter.

"Excellent." Shikamaru spun around, a shadowing flaring out behind him like the tail of a cloak - it never hurt to have a flair of the dramatic when intimidating someone - and stalked to the seat, a tall chair not unlike a throne, the late draugr had abandoned to him before sitting down and surveying his new subordinates. "I want the names and locations of every ghost your Master viewed as a equal or a threat, and I want them before sundown today or you'll go the same way as he did. Is that clear?"

The three ghosts were shaking so hard that the looked unable to speak. A displeased frown on his face, Shikamaru leaned forward. "I said, _is that clear?_ "

"Y-yes, M-M-Master!" They chorused before taking off like a shot in different directions, the chattering of their teeth audible to the phantom for quite a while as they fled his presence.

Leaning back against the throne-like chair - it really was rather comfortable, and gave one a good view of those one was intimidating, he decided - Shikamaru settled in to wait. After all, why do the dirty work yourself when you could get someone to do it for you? An idea popped into his head after he glanced back down at the still-smouldering cigarette butt the draugr had dropped, and with a twist of his finger he summoned up a cigar made out of shadow, insubstantial shadow-smoke wreathing out of the end. Clamping the end between his teeth, Shikamaru took a drag, then exhaled the shadow-smoke to encircle his head. His lip twitched up in amusement as he discovered that he could manipulate it just as easily as he could his normal shadows, twisting the cloud of shadow-smoke into a myriad of terrifying shapes.

It had been a long time since he'd gone all out. He'd forgotten how good it could feel to crush opposition with little to no effort. This might… this might be fun.


	24. The Bravery of Fear

Wow, um, it's uh... it's been a while. Why does real life always get in the way of writing? Anyway, I'm back now and here's too much fluff to handle in one chapter to make up for it. Thank you for my small but mighty reviewing fan base of two! You always make my day a little brighter!

* * *

Hinata was a fidgety bundle of nerves and little else by the time came for her to be ready for her very first sleepover with Neji's friends. She had packed and repacked her bag a thousand times, changing her mind every five minutes on what pajamas she should wear until her father, as if sensing her mounting panic, had grabbed two and held them behind his back, then told her to pick a hand and just pack that one because they were going to be late if she didn't hurry up. She hadn't been entirely pleased with the result, a light purple matching tunic and soft pants, but she'd conceded when she'd seen the time and thrown them into her bag.

Now all that was left to do was wait for Konohamaru to arrive with his mom's van to pick up her and her tiny bag, but even just that was making Hinata nervous. She'd texted Konohamaru directions to the back entrance of the Hyuuga compound, the less formal one that mostly the live-in family used, at her father's behest. She was a little surprised that he hadn't insisted on dropping her off himself, but when Konohamaru offered he'd readily agreed, though she suspected his motivation might have more to with scaring Konohamaru then any greater ease for him.

Hinata compulsively checked the time on her phone for the third time in as many minutes, watching the numbers tic closer and closer to four-thirty with no sign of Konohamaru's van down the street. Her hand tightened around the handle of her small, brightly colored duffle bag when she saw it change to 4:29.

 _It's fine,_ she tried to reason with herself and her rising heart rate. _There's no reason he should be here early, after all. He's just picking me up for a sleepover, is all. It's not like we have somewhere we need to be on time. He's on his way_.

4:30.

 _He's definitely on his way. It's hard to find this place, so he could be driving slow to make sure he doesn't miss a turn. Or his GPS sent him around the long way. Or traffic, there's lots of traffic at this time. And not all clocks are synchronized to the same time. His watch might say he's still five minutes early. He's definitely coming._

4:31.

 _OH MY GOD HE'S NOT COMING AND HE HATES ME AND THEY ALL HATE ME AND THEY'RE PROBABLY ALL LAUGHING RIGHT NOW LIKE 'WHY WOULD SHE THINK WE WOULD EVER WANT TO HANG OUT WITH HER SHE'S TOO QUIET AND NERVOUS AND WOULDN'T BE ANY FUN AND ISN'T SHE SO STUPID FOR THINKING WE WOULD EVER WANT TO ASSOCIATE WITH HER' AND-!_

"Hinata!" The voice of her father cut into Hinata's panicked mental ramblings, drawing her attention to a van that had just pulled up to the curb. "I think your ride is here."

 _Oh_.

The driver's-side door opened out into the street, and Konohamaru got out, shading his eyes in the late afternoon sun. Hinata stood up from her perch on the back steps when she saw him, and he quickly caught sight of her and jogged towards he steps.

"Hey, Hinata!"

Hinata blushed and held her duffle bag up like a barrier in front of her. "Hi, K-Kono… Konohamaru."

"Were you waiting long?" He asked as he came up to the bottom step. He made as if to step onto it, but Hinata quickly moved down to prevent that. This was as far as any outsider was allowed to come.

"A l-little. But not t-too long."

"That's good." He gestured to her bag. "Can I get that for you?"

"Oh!" For some reason, though she felt she shouldn't be, Hinata was surprised by the chivalrous offer. "Um, sure."

She handed him the bag, and his fingers brushed hers gently as he took it from her. Instinctively, she flinched back at the touch, though she tried to hide it, but she knew that she hadn't fooled either Konohamaru or her father, standing in the shadows behind her.

"So you're the young man who can convince my daughter to get out of the house. I must say, you're not quite what I expected."

Konohamaru jumped at the sound of his voice, clearly having missed his presence. When Hinata's father moved out of the shadow that was cloaking his presence, his eyes went wide and he started stumbling over his words.

"I-! Uh- you, um, you must be Hinata's father! Um, it's n-nice to meet you, Mr. Hyuuga! Sir!"

Hinata's father regarded him with narrowed eyes for a moment, then allowed himself to chuckle.

"Just Mr. Hyuuga is fine, Konohamaru, was it? It's _my_ father you'd need to address as Sir."

"Yes, Mr…. Hyuuga?" The last part of his name trailed off into a question as the words sunk all the way into Konohamaru's brain, but he soon shook off the unwanted thoughts with the air of a dog shedding rain from his fur and flashed his trademark smile. "You ready, then, Hinata?"

"Y-yes," Hinata stuttered quietly, flicking a quick glance sideways to take in her father's reaction.

Konohamaru stepped back to allow Hinata to descend from the steps, and her father made no move to stop her, so Konohamaru must have met with his approval- at least for now. Hinata followed Konohamaru back to the van smiling bashfully when he opened the passenger door for her, despite his hands being full. She got in the car and closed the door behind her, then buckled her seat belt and turned to look out the closed window. Konohamaru had turned to put her duffle bag in the back of the van, but unbeknownst to them, Hinata's father had followed them to the car and caught his arm, preventing him from moving too far away. An icy look on his face, he leaned down and whispered something in Konohamaru's ear that Hinata couldn't hear through the closed car window, something that had him instantly shaking and the blood draining from his face.

He had to frantically nod and stutter something that Hinata couldn't make out for almost a full minute before her father finally let him go with a nod and a final warning look. He almost stumbled as Hinata's father was no longer holding him upright, but quickly righted himself, bowed several times to the tall man, threw Hinata's duffle bag into the back of the van and ran around to the other side of the car as if there was a rabid dog behind him and jumped into the driver's seat. Hinata couldn't help but feel nervous just looking at his panicked face as he fumbled with his keys, almost dropping them twice before finally getting them into the ignition and turning it. The engine roared to life, coughing a bit as he held the key in the start position for a little too long, then whined as he grabbed the wheel and pressed his foot to the gas pedal before taking the car out of park and into drive.

"Are y-you okay?" Hinata asked carefully, hiding the trembling of her hands by sitting on them.

"Yeah! Great…" Konohamaru responded, taking a deep breath and shifting the car out of park. It was obvious that he was taking great pains to drive a reasonable speed and not run like the devil was on their tails - which, considering the look Hinata's father had given him, it might as well have been. "Your father's a pretty scary guy…" he muttered as they finally rounded a corner and he disappeared behind them.

"S-sorry!" Hinata managed to stutter, her face coloring. "I- I d-didn't know h-he was g-going to d-do that-t."

Konohamaru took another deep breath and plastered a smile on his face. "It's alright," he managed through gritted teeth, flexing his fingers around the steering wheel. "I mean, I knew he'd probably be strict, with how you talked about your curfew and stuff, I just never thought…" He trained off uncomfortably.

"What d-did he say to you?" Hinata asked when he didn't finish his thought, but Konohamaru jerked at the question, almost sending the vehicle into another lane of traffic and causing several irritated honks to be sent their way.

"Just- normal Dad stuff!" He squeaked, his words at odds with his tone and white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. "You know, the kind every Dad says when a guy comes to pick up his daughter! He's probably given that same speech a hundred times, ha ha…"

He trailed off again, and Hinata looked back down into her lap.

"N-not really. This would… this would be the f-first time."

Hinata didn't know why, but her words seemed to have some kind of vitalizing effect on Konohamaru. His grip on the steering wheel loosened and his chest puffed out slightly, and the grin he tossed her way was more assured.

"Then we'll have to make it count, now won't we? Udon and Moegi will probably be there already when we get back, so we can start right on the movies. Now, I know you said you don't like scary movies, but how do you feel about action movies? Udon is a big fan of the _Die Hard_ series, and he always tries to make us watch at least one every time we get together. What do you think?"

* * *

Udon and Moegi were at Konohamaru's house by the time they arrived there, as was Konohamaru's mom, a woman Hinata recognized as the woman she had sat next to when she had gone to see Neji's concert after getting back from the East Coast. Apparently she recognized Hinata as well, because she folded her into a giant hug the moment she laid eyes on her and wouldn't stop fluttering around her until Konohamaru came to her rescue, telling her that she was embarrassing him. In response, she kissed his cheek very loudly in front of all of them and then told them to have fun, and even Hinata had to stifle a giggle at his red cheeks.

After voting on what kinds of pizza they wanted - and settling on a cheese for Hinata, since she didn't get pizza very often and just wanted something plain, a pepperoni for Udon and Moegi, their favorite flavor, and a kind of specialty pizza for Konohamaru called a "Red Dragon's Fire Breath", which she was warned not to touch because Konohamaru was the only person in existence who had managed to eat even a single slice without tearing up from the level of spiciness - they popped in a movie and started watching. Udon got his way first and they started their marathon with the first _Die Hard_ , which Hinata will fully admit she didn't understand much of because she kept getting distracted by the gunshots and explosions. After him, Moegi picked, and they started watching _Titanic_ , an idea that was quickly nixed when Hinata panicked and started screaming, "Why is she taking off her clothes!?" during the scene where Jack draws Rose. Luckily, the pizza arrived at just that moment, so disaster was averted and the DVD was quickly and unobtrusively removed and replaced by a comedy starring Robin Williams during the resulting chaos.

"What's the n-name of this movie again?" Hinata asked quietly after a particularly funny joke that had her giggling while everyone else guffawed, despite how well they seemed to know the movie.

" _Mrs. Doubtfire_ ," Udon called over the heads of the other two, as he was currently the only one capable of speech. "A masterpiece of comedic genius."

"Do you like it?" Konohamaru wheezed, taking a gulp of water in an attempt to combat his laughter.

"It's funny," Hinata admitted. "I like it."

Konohamaru beamed at her. "Hey, you said that without stuttering! That's awesome! That means you're not as nervous around us anymore, right?"

Hinata flushed and turned her attention her pizza so she wouldn't have to respond. She finished off the last morsel of the slice that was in her hand in a few bites, then blushed harder as she realized she was still hungry. Konohamaru must have sensed the shift in her blush, however, because he quickly stood up, plate in hand.

"Hey, I'm going for another slice. Anyone else need one? Hinata?"

"Yes, pl-please," she whispered.

"What kind? Cheese again, or…" he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively at her, "do you want to try my Fiery Dragon pizza?"

"She doesn't want that shit, Konohamaru," Moegi called from across the room. "Don't let him talk you into it, Hinata. That pizza's got enough habanero on it to kill you."

"Don't bully her out of it, Moegi!" Konohamaru retorted. "Hinata can have whatever kind of pizza she wants!"

"Shut up, both of you!" Udon suddenly roared. "And get out of the way! I can't see the screen."

Konohamaru sighed, but moved obediently to the side and shot his attention back to Hinata. "So, what'll it be? Cheese?"

For a moment, Hinata hesitated. Her father was fond of spicy food and they sometimes had their meals prepared a little on the hotter side, so she was fairly confident in her ability to handle spice. Then again, from the way Udon and Moegi were talking about it, it sounded less like a pizza with spicy toppings and more like an all-out war against the senses. Still, there had been a look in Konohamaru's eyes when he had offered her a piece of the spicy pizza - _his_ pizza - that stuck with her. It couldn't be too bad, could it? And sharing… sharing might be nice…

"I'll, um, if y-you're off-offering, I'll h-have a p-p-piece of the D-Dr-Dragon-n one…"

The look Moegi turned on her made it obvious she though Hinata had just signed her own death warrant, but the pleased grin on Konohamaru's face made up for it. "Alright! One spicy Red Dragon, coming up!"

"At least get her a glass of milk or something to go with it!" Moegi called after him, only to be knocked to the side by a pillow flying her way.

"I said, be quiet!"

It seemed to be taking Konohamaru longer in the kitchen than it had before, so Hinata craned her neck to the side to try and see what he was doing. After a few more seconds of rummaging around and cabinets banging, he reappeared in the entranceway to the living room, carrying two slices of pizza on his plate and a glass of milk in the other hand.

"If it's too much for you," he said by of explanation as he settled down next to her - which was a different spot than he had been sitting in before, and he had to shove an irritated Udon over in order to fit - and slid one of the pieces from his plate onto hers. "Well, dig in! Don't be shy!"

Hinata gave the slice a cursory glance before lifting it off her plate gingerly. The two main attractions above the cheese were a few slices of pepperoni - thicker and a brighter red than the ones on Udon and Moegi's pizza, so Hinata suspected they packed a bigger punch - and slices of an unfamiliar pepper that ranged in color from a light yellow-orange to a darker red; probably the habanero Moegi had referred to earlier. After taking a light breath to steady her nerves, Hinata brought the pizza up to her mouth and took a large bite.

She regretted her decision almost as soon as she started chewing. The pepperoni and peppers by themselves weren't bad - though the peppers were _very_ spicy - but the sauce was a different matter. She'd been expecting most of the spice to be concentrated on top of the cheese, with the spicy toppings and what she now realized was red pepper flakes baked directly into the cheese, but that assumption was proven false when a slug of the sauce hit her tongue directly. Whatever it was, it wasn't normal tomato sauce; in fact, she suspected it had been cut maybe even fifty-fifty with a hot sauce at least the spiciness level of habanero, if not close to ghost peppers. A burn started at the tip of her tongue and spread through her whole mouth and down her throat when she swallowed, intensifying with every passing second.

It was about thirty seconds after she swallowed that Hinata managed to gasp for air again, the hearing that she hadn't realized she'd lost coming back and revealing three concerned voices focused now on her instead of the movie.

"I told you not to give it to her, Konohamaru!"

"She was the one who wanted it!"

"Well, you shouldn't have offered!"

"Her face is as red as a beet, look- she looks like she might combust!"

"Why did she take it if she didn't like spicy things?!"

"Because she was too nice to refuse, you dumbass!"

"Oh my god, is she crying?"

Surprised, Hinata reached up and touched her cheek to find that it was wet with tears- but was careful not to let them stray anywhere near her sensitive and already protesting eyes. She wiped them on her sleeve, sniffling a little as she blinked and her vision slowly returned to normal.

"Quick, give her the milk!"

The glass of milk was shoved in Hinata's face, the blurry edges just clear enough for her to grasp and tilt into her mouth. A blessed cool sensation enveloped her tongue and she gulped a few more swallows before finally putting the glass down and panting.

Konohamaru touched her shoulder, timid and unsure. "Hinata? Are you… alright? Alive? Can you still speak?"

"I'm… I'm okay," she choked out. Every breath that ghosted past her lips felt like a lick of flame. "I think… I think I understand why they call it 'Dragon's Breath' now."

There was a moment of quiet where the only sound was the movie still playing in the background, ignored in light of recent events, then Konohamaru laughed, a peal of delight that ricocheted through the room.

"Sure does make your lips numb, doesn't it?"

"This isn't a laughing matter, Konohamaru!" Moegi leaned over the top of Hinata to cuff the impudent smile off Konohamaru's face. "You don't have to finish that if you don't want to, honey. We can just give it to the fire-breathing dragon over there and get you a normal slice."

Hinata looked from her face to Konohamaru's to the slice of pizza in front of her, then gave a tiny shrug and lifted it to her mouth again. The second bite renewed the burning sensation the milk had just barely managed to mask, but she found it more manageable this time.

"The first bite's the worst," she said through a mouthful of pizza. "It's hot, but not _too_ too hot. I kinda like it."

"You are all kinds of crazy, Hinata," Morgan observed reproachfully as Konohamaru pumped his fist into the air.

"Yes! I have an ally with me on the side of spice!"

Finally, Udon snapped, "Will you three just shut up and watch the movie? This is my favorite part!"

They did just that, and Hinata managed to completely consume the slice of red-hot spicy pizza before the credits began to roll, though she did drink the rest of the glass of milk and another whole glass that Konohamaru got for her in the process. Throughout the rest of the movie, Konohamaru sat closer to Hinata, though whether it was because he was making sure she really was okay after the extreme spice or something else, she couldn't tell. When it was over, he stood and stretched, offering a hand to take Hinata's plate, which she accepted.

"I think it's your turn to pick a movie, Hinata."

"M-my turn?" She squeaked. She hadn't anticipated this- she'd thought that they'd just pick a movie and she would watch it with them. She didn't watch enough movies to know anything about them.

"Yeah." Udon rolled his eyes. "You didn't think we were going to subject you to our terrible and differing tastes in movies the whole night, did you? You should get to pick at least one."

"Um…"

Seeing her hesitation, Moegi pointed at a shelf next to the tv loaded with DVDs. "Over there. Just pick something that looks good to you."

"O- okay."

With trepidation echoing in her footsteps, Hinata made her way to the shelf and tilted her head to the side to read the titles. None of them were familiar to her, but that didn't surprise her considering how much of the things she was allowed to take in was censored by her family. The only movies she'd ever really watched before were documentaries. Picking at random, she pulled a case from the shelf. _Children of the Corn._ That looked scary. She quickly put it back and took out another. _A Clockwork Orange_. Mechanical fruit? That sounded weird; she didn't know if she could handle it. The next movie she pulled out was called _Twilight_ , and she flipped it over and started to read the summary, only to stuff it back onto the shelf once she read the word _vampire_. Vampires were way too scary, in any context.

Becoming frustrated with her search, Hinata trailed her finger along the spines of the cases before stopping at one that looked promising and pulling it out. _The Conjuring,_ it proclaimed, and she flipped it over to read the back. Huh. That didn't sound so bad.

"H-how about this one?"

By this time, Konohamaru had made it back from the kitchen, and Hinata extended the case toward him for approval. When he read the title, his eyebrows crawled up his forehead.

"I thought you said you didn't like scary movies?"

"Th-this is a scary m-movie?" Hinata asked, confused. The synopsis had said it was about a ghost haunting a family, and that was a little scary, but it was a normal kind of story for Hinata, one she heard a thousand times before from her family. "It said it's based on a true st-story, so isn't it like a d-documentary?"

Konohamaru stared at her. "It's about ghosts."

Hinata stared right back, breaking their eye contact with a single blink. "Ghosts aren't scary."

"Ghosts are totally scary! They're like the scariest things that exist!"

"No way! Ghosts aren't scary! Vampires are much scarier!" Hinata grabbed the vampire movie she'd found earlier from the shelf and thrust is at Konohamaru. " _This_ is a scary movie!"

" _Twilight_?" He inquired incredulously. " _Twilight_ isn't scary- well, I mean, it kind is, but not like that! It's literally the least scary vampire movie that exists!"

"Vampires are scary," Hinata announced. "I want to watch the ghost movie."

When Moegi sniggered at their display, Hinata immediately realized what she'd been saying and shrunk in on herself.

"I m-mean, if th-that's okay. P-please."

"I mean, it's fine," Konohamaru quickly said. "I just thought… I mean, this movie scares me sometimes, so… but we can watch it if you want."

"You just want to sit right next to her like a gentleman and hold her hand if she gets scared, don't you, Konohamaru?" Udon jeered good-naturedly from across the room.

Both Hinata and Konohamaru pinkened at his suggestion. "I- I- I-!" Hinata stuttered madly, and Konohamaru didn't fare much better.

"Udon-! Why would-? I wouldn't-!"

"Settle down, both of you," Moegi sighed. "Hinata, I've seen that movie before and it is a little on the scary side, and it's definitely not a documentary. Are you sure that's what you want to watch?"

Hinata could only nod, not trusting her voice to speak. At her agreement, Konohamaru bent down and popped it in the DVD player and everyone took their seats again, this time with Konohamaru next to Hinata and Udon on the floor so Konohamaru wasn't pushing him out of the way anymore. At Moegi's insistence, they also turned off the lights, something she said was absolutely necessary for proper ambience of the movie. Hinata didn't mind; the dark just meant that no one would see her blush.

The first thing she noticed was the color scheme of the movie, vastly different from the other movies they had watched earlier that night. Gone were the bright shades, the reds, yellows, and oranges, all replaced with dingy greens and blues and drab greys. Second was the music, dark and suspenseful, made to draw the listener's nerves up tighter than the strings of the orchestra playing it. Neither of those things bothered Hinata, though, as she had been exposed to a lot of ghost culture and energy, even if the first time she'd seen truly powerful ones had been in Konoha, and she settled in to watch the movie, at least six inches of space between her and Konohamaru.

As the first fifteen minutes of the movie progressed and the atmosphere slowly grew more and more tense, both in the movie and in her companions, Hinata noticed the gap between her and Konohamaru slowly inching closed. She frowned slightly but didn't say anything because there were at least five inches still between them, and the wan light from the TV showed that Konohamaru's face was drawn with nerves. He probably didn't even realize that he was doing it, so she turned back to focus on the movie.

On the screen, a woman was following a suspicious noise to its source, which kept moving, and Hinata's frown deepened. Why was she doing that? She didn't have anything to protect herself with, and the longer she followed the noise, the closer she would be to the heart of the ghost's - probably a draugr, by the context of the movie and the specific situation - lair, and therefore their center of power. Didn't this woman know anything?

"Wh-why is-?" she started to ask, only to be cut off by a sudden loud crash onscreen, and the lights illuminating the woman going out and leaving the entire room - since the television was their only source of illumination as well - in darkness. "Jesus Christ! What the hell was that?" She shrieked, prompting everyone else to freeze for a moment and then laugh.

"That, Hinata, was a jump scare," Moegi explained with a laugh in her voice while Udon chortled. "That's why I thought you wouldn't want to watch this movie."

"You're making fun of her!" Konohamaru accused. "Cut it out- it's not funny! Hinata, you can change your mind and we can watch something else if you want."

Onscreen, the woman lit a match that barely illuminated her surroundings. Hinata cocked her head to the side, considering for a few moments, then finally shook it. "N-no, I w-want to watch this one. I wasn't s-scared, I was j-just sur-surp-surprised." Her voice shook on the last word and she had to try several times before it came out fully, feeling the heat of three shocked gazes fall on her.

"Not scared?" Udon asked incredulously. "How were you not scared?"

"I was scared!" Konohamaru added, and Hinata could sense an impressed undercurrent to his voice mixed in with the nerves from the movie.

Hinata shrugged lightly, squirming uncomfortably under the weight of her friends scrutiny. "Ghosts just… aren't scary to m-me. I was m-mostly thinking about how she's going about that all wrong."

Konohamaru shifted towards her, the light from the forgotten movie reflecting off his eyes. "How so?"

Twisting her fingers in the material of her shirt hem, a little uncomfortable with the attention, Hinata whispered, "W-well, she was c-close to the k-kitchen; she c-could have picked up something to d-defend herself with before g-going after the ghost. That would be the s-smartest move."

"Like what?"

"Um…" Hinata floundered for a moment. "W-well, um, m-most houses have f-family silver, r-right? Silver burns ghosts, s-so that'd be a g-good idea… or some salt; lots of k-kitchens have salt… though c-coarse salt does work b-better, but the iodized stuff will d-do in a pinch. If she laid a l-line of it over the th-thresh-hold that she crossed, the g-ghost wouldn't b-be able to c-cross it and she could retreat safely if she n-needed it."

"Huh," Udon remarked after her speech. "You sure know a lot about ghosts, Hinata."

Hinata flushed, and she felt her heart beat suddenly faster. One of the most stringent rules of the Hyuuga family was to never talk about ghosts in front of outsiders, so they wouldn't get suspicious. Her palms suddenly sweaty, she wiped them on her pants and stuttered, "W-well, y-you know, j-just what-t's in b-books and s-stuff."

"So you must like ghost stories, then?"

Hinata could only shrug, turning her attention forcibly back to the movie. Luckily, Udon didn't seem interested in pressing the point any further, so she found her soft interrogation coming to an abrupt end. The rest of the movie, she forced herself to stay quiet, despite the questions she found piling up in her brain. It really wasn't that scary, at least to her, who could only focus on how wrong the decisions the characters were making and how poorly executed the ghosts were, despite the claim that the movie was based on a true story. She could only guess that the true events had been distorted just a little by every lense they had been viewed through until they no longer gave an accurate representation of the events as they had truly happened.

On the other side of things, the other three people in the room seemed to get more wound up and tense the longer the movie went on. With every jump scare, Konohamaru lept about a foot in the air and landed just a little bit closer to her, until by the end of the movie, his hand was gripping her leg like it was the only thing keeping him from ascending through the ceiling. Of course, Hinata also found her body tensing at every unexpected sound or sudden scare, but nothing like the rest of the people in the room, and by the time the movie was done, she found herself grinning. As the credits rolled and Moegi shakily stood up to turn the lights back on, Konohamaru finally sensed where his hand was and removed it just in time so that the others didn't see it when light flooded the room. Hinata had to blink a few times in the sudden brightness, and when her vision had returned to her, she noticed that Konohamaru's face was turning red.

"That was a g-good movie," Hinata commented, standing up and stretching.

Konohamaru turned to her in surprise, though Hinata noticed that he didn't look her in the eye. "You really think so? You weren't scared at all?"

"Not as m-much as you- um… y-you w-were," Hinata managed to cough out, the teasing words sticking in her throat when she noticed Udon and Moegi staring at the two of them halfway through.

Udon grinned. "He was probably hoping you'd get scared and want to hold his hand."

"UDON!"

"Well, am I right or not?"

"No, but I-! I didn't-! Um… that… that's… STOP ASKING STUPID QUESTIONS!"

Now Moegi joined the fray, sidling up to Konohamaru and poking him in the side with a smirk. "Maybe you were hoping she'd hold your hand because _you_ were scared."

Hinata couldn't help it; she giggled at the sight of Konohamaru's stricken face, holding her hand in front of her mouth to hide her smile. "If-f you w-were scared and n-needed to hold m-my hand, all you had t-to do was ask."

"I WASN'T SCA- wait, really?"

Moegi cackled and slapped Hinata on the back, using perhaps a little too much force and propelling her forward, causing her to stagger a few steps before regaining her balance. "I knew you'd fit in perfect with us, Hinata. You've got a great sense of humor. And your delivery is _killer_. That shy stutter just makes everything better."

Hinata's shoulders tensed at them mention of her stutter. "You r-really… um, you really th-think so?"

"Course! It's so pure, you have to stop and think about whether you're teasing or being serious."

Turning back to look at Moegi, Hinata tilted her head to the side. "What m-makes you think I'm t-teasing?"

If possible, Moegi cackled even louder. "And there you go! Perfect!"

"Cut it out, you guys," Udon interjected from across the room, where he was taking the DVD out of the player and replacing it in the case where it belonged. "You're going to make Konohamaru combust if you're not careful."

True to his words, Konohamaru's face was now an alarming shade of red. Hinata felt her face flush in an automatic sympathetic response and she took a step toward him. "I'm sorry, Kono-Konoha… Konohamaru. I d-didn't mean to tease you."

Her words had the opposite effect than she intended, though, or maybe it was her proximity, because Konohamaru's face reddened instead of lightning and he started stumbling over his words. "It's fine-! I mean, I didn't… You… you don't have to worry about… umm… stuff… or anything…"

Luckily for him, a yawn chose that time to make its way up from Hinata's throat, and her eyes widened when her gaze landed on the clock. "It's already eleven?! That's s-so late- no wonder I'm t-tired!"

"You're joking, right?"

The words echoed from behind Hinata, causing her to jump. With a frown, she turned to where Udon was regarding her with confusion mixed with something that might have been the kind of tenderness someone felt when looking at something small and fluffy. "N-no?" She replied, her own confusion causing the word to come out more as a question than a statement.

"What Udon means," Moegi cut it, "is that it's not _already_ eleven: it's _only_ eleven. The night is still young, and we have plenty more movies left to watch- _and_ we haven't even broken into the popcorn yet."

With a wondering look, Udon shoved his hands in his pants pockets. "You've never really done this before, have you, Hinata? Stayed up all night with friends, talking and giggling past bedtimes, thinking you were getting away with something when in reality, your parents know exactly what you're doing?"

"I've n-never had the opportunity before," Hinata admitted. "The only person I've ever done something like this with b-before is Neji, and he's very strict about going to b-bed and waking up early."

"Then we're going to have to fix that," Konohamaru announced from behind her, causing her to jump when his hand landed on her shoulder. "We're partying until dawn tonight!"

Hinata felt her face blanch. "B-b-b-but I have to b-be home b-by t-t-t-ten t-tomorrow!"

"It's just an expression, Hinata," Moegi explained, shooting a look over her shoulder that had Konohamaru backing away with his hands in the air. "We won't actually keep you up until dawn. We're just going to stay up a little later, maybe one or two more movies. You up for it?"

It took Hinata a couple of seconds, but she finally nodded nervously. "O-okay. I'll t-try."

"Perfect!" Moegi grinned, and Hinata found herself falling prey to another one of her vicious back slaps. "It is getting late though, so why don't we all get into our pajamas? That might be more comfortable."

Everyone readily agreed, and soon Hinata found herself in an unfamiliar bathroom with only her small duffle bag as company. Casting a nervous glance at the door, she undressed and got into her pajamas - the purple matching set her father had helped her pick - as quickly as she could while simultaneously keeping the largest amount of her skin covered as possible. When that was done, she quickly brushed her teeth - finally alleviating the lingering burn of hot sauce from her mouth - and pushed open the door to reunite with the rest of the sleepover crew.

Konohamaru was the only one who was already in the living room, having quickly changed in his room to a comfortable-looking pair of sweatpants and a well-worn tshirt. He looked up when Hinata entered, his eyes going wide when he saw what she was wearing. Hinata instantly felt the urge to cover herself with something - her duffle bag was the closest thing on hand - but quelled the urge and, after taking a deep breath, set down her bag near the wall and walked back to her seat next to Konohamaru, proud of the fact that her legs barely shook when she sat back down.

"Wow, um, Hinata, those… those pajamas are really… really cute," Konohamaru floundered, scratching the back of his head with pink cheeks.

Hinata felt her own cheeks flush in response. "Th-thanks."

"Hey, Hinata-"

Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by the presence of Moegi, who vaulted over the back of the couch and landed directly between them. "Woo! I beat Udon!" Her grin widened when she saw Hinata's pajamas. "Nice 'jams, Hinata. I approve."

She was also wearing sleepwear that looked more like worn-out old clothes than actual pajamas like Hinata was wearing, making her feel even more out of place. "Th-they're no g-good, are they?" She sighed, picking at a thread on the hem of her pants.

"No, they're adorable! You shouldn't base any conceptions of modern sleepwear fashion off anything we three wear." Moegi slid her arm around Hinata and gave her a grin that boosted her confidence - but only somewhat. "You're more liable to end up with a pair of underwear on your head than anything decent."

"THAT WAS ONE TIME, MOEGI, AND YOU AND UDON PUT THEM ON ME WHEN I WAS ALREADY ASLEEP! THAT PICTURE WAS A HOAX, I TELL YOU! I WAS FRAMED!"

"But you did look very fetching in them," Udon added as he joined the company already in the living room. "Alright, guys, what's next?"

"Oooo, my turn to pick!" Moegi instantly jumped up from the couch and ran to the shelf of movies.

"And how do you figure that? Udon went first, and we've gone through all of us so far."

Moegi rolled her eyes at them before going back to her task. "Because my last pick got aborted halfway through the mission."

Hinata sank a little lower in on herself on the couch.

"Fair enough," Udon sighed. "Just anything but that stupid-"

"And you all know what my go-to late night feature film is!" Moegi exclaimed, dragging something off the shelf and waving it at them.

"-fish movie," Udon finished glumly, sitting down with an air of resignation. "Why do you always pick that movie, Moegi? You always fall asleep halfway through! I don't think you've ever seen the whole thing from start to finish!"

"All the more reason to try again! No complaints, or you know what will happen the next time you want to watch _your_ favorite movie!"

"Fine," he groused, folding his arms over his chest. "But don't expect me to like it."

"You don't have to like it; you just have to watch it."

This time, the movie was animated, and Hinata found herself engrossed by the colorful underwater world and the beautiful way the fish moved through it. True to Udon's word, however, not even forty-five minutes had gone by before Moegi had passed out, laying on the floor in what had to be an uncomfortable position. Udon scoffed quietly at her form, but as soon as he reached for the remote to pause the movie, she slapped his hand away while she was in what appeared to be a dead sleep, so he was forced to leave it alone. Ten minutes later, Hinata had to stifle a laugh when Konohamaru nudged her gently, pointing out that Udon's head was also lolling to the side in a manner that would leave a crick the following morning.

"They do this every time," he whispered close to Hinata's ear, causing a tremor to make its way down her spine. "Udon complains, but this movie puts him to sleep just as much as it down Moegi."

"I don't see why," Hinata whispered back. "It's very c-captivating. I hope that clownfish finds his son."

"Just wait until you see the shark sequence."

The words sent a thrill of terror down Hinata's spine. "Sh-sharks?" She squeaked.

That drew a laugh from Konohamaru. "Don't worry," he teased gently, his breath stirring her hair as he parroted her words from earlier. "If you get scared, all you have to do is ask and you can hold my hand."

They sat together in companionable silence for the rest of the movie, the only sounds in the room the ones from the television or the tiny noises Moegi and Udon made in their sleep. And yes, Hinata did reflexively grab Konohamaru's hand during the shark sequence, but she let go of it soon after. The comforting squeeze his fingers have hers was enough to give her enough courage to last through the rest of the dramatic, tension-filled moments in the movie.

When at last the credits started to roll, Moegi finally stretched and stood up. "That was a good movie!"

"How can you tell? You slept through practically the whole thing!"

"That's how I can tell, duh. If it was a bad movie, it would have kept me awake. _Finding Nemo_ is very soothing."

"Shhh!" Hinata suddenly interrupted their bickering. When they both turned to her, she flushed under their stares, then pointed silently to Udon in lieu of an answer.

His head was still lolled to the side in the same uncomfortable position, but now his mouth was falling open and a line of drool was making its way down his chin. Moegi snorted in amusement when she saw him, then released a sigh.

"I suppose that means the end of our marathon," she said in a slightly quieter voice. "Damn. And I was hoping we'd make it all night this time; it's only one in the morning."

 _One in the morning?!_ Hinata let out an almost interceptable squeak as her astonished gaze found the blinking numbers on the clock that said it was, indeed, almost one. She'd never stayed up this late before, not even when she'd been on trips with Neji that required him to travel across country. All of a sudden, she became aware of an overwhelming tiredness that swept over her body, and she had to stifle a yawn behind a hand.

Moegi was suddenly behind Hinata, causing her to jump. "And it looks like he's not the only one! What do you say we call it a night, Konohamaru?"

"I suppose," he answered, though Hinata could hear the disappointment in his tone. "My mom set up the air mattress on the floor of my room. I'll show you where, then drag this guy-" he hooked a thumb over his shoulder at Udon's sleeping form "-to bed."

Hinata was surprised that they were all sleeping in the same room, but she tried not to show it. She and Moegi were on the air mattress, with Konohamaru on his bed and a futon set out for Udon that looked more like a permanent establishment than a temporary place to sleep, making Hinata wonder how often Udon slept over versus both him and Moegi. He and Konohamaru were closer in age, and both boys, after all.

After she and Moegi were settled in, Konohamaru disappeared through the door and reappeared a few minutes later with Udon's passed out form slung over his shoulder.

"I actually slapped him - hard - and still the bastard didn't wake up," he grumbled, then tossed Udon unceremoniously down on the futon without bothering to pull any of the covers over him or even check if he was still breathing. "Serves you right, jackass."

"Oh, pipe down and shut the light off," Moegi moaned, pulling the sheet over her head and dislodging it from under Hinata's arm. "I'm trying to sleep here!"

"Quit whining. I'm getting to it."

Konohamaru flicked off the light switch, plunging the room into darkness, and made his way to his own bed. On the way, he stumbled on the corner of the air mattress, an unfamiliar obstruction in his path, and lost his balance and had to grab the closest thing - which happened to be Hinata's knee - to keep himself from falling down.

"Sorry, Moegi!" He hissed, and Hinata felt a flush creep over her cheeks. That had happened a lot tonight.

"I-it's ok-kay."

"H-Hinata?!" The hand on her knee drew back as swiftly as if it had burned Konohamaru. "I'm sorry-! I didn't mean-!"

"Just shut up and go to bed!" Moegi groaned, reaching over the top of Hinata to bat at Konohamaru with her pillow.

"Sorry! Will do!"

He clambered into bed and the only sound that followed was three sets of heavy breathing and Hinata's own light inhales and exhales. Rolling over on her side and trying to ignore the presence hogging the blankets next to her, she closed her eyes and allowed a small smile to creep over her lips as she remembered the best parts of the day. It had been nerve-wracking and scary, and there had been an uncountable number of times when she'd wanted to call it quits very badly, but now she was so glad she'd stuck it through to the end. No matter what happened now, if she was forbidden from seeing them again, if she was married off, if she was sent far away to live in another city - all very real possibilities for her future that she'd known existed from an early age - she would always have the memories of this night, the one time in her life where she was brave enough to want something for herself.

Hinata snuggled down into the air mattress and tried to fall asleep. She was so excited, however, that she was unable to calm her racing heartbeat for a long time, and she just lay there with a stupid grin on her face that no one could see in the dark. After a significant period of time passed and she was still unable to fall asleep, however, despite how tired she was, Hinata felt the grin slip from her face. This wasn't right. She pulled her tired eyes open and blinked blearily until her gaze found a clock on the nightstand next to Konohamaru's bed. The blinking numbers read _1:53._

One fifty-three?! Hinata had been lying awake for almost an hour?! She quickly sat up, dislodging the nest of sheets and blankets around her, then winced and hed her breath when Moegi moved next to her. She only released the breath she'd been holding in when she settling back down into her former pattern of deep breaths. Maybe she just needed to get a drink of water or something, then she could fall asleep. Now, which way was the bathroom again?

Just as she was trying to untangle herself from the mass of sheets that Moegi had created, Hinata sensed Konohamaru sit up in his bed. A quiet whisper echoed into the silence of the sleeping room. "Hinata? Is that you?"

"Sh!" Was her instant reply, her shoulders tensing and her heart rate accelerating again. "Th-they'l hear us-s and-d wake up-p!"

"Nah, both Moegi and Udon are really heavy sleepers. A bomb could go off in the street and they'd probably sleep through it. What's up? Can't sleep?"

"Y-yeah," Hinata admitted. "I'm s-sorry. It's just… it's m-my f-first t-time sleeping away from h-home, and I'm a little…" She trailed off, hunching her shoulders in embarrassment.

"Nervous? Yeah, I get that. Me too. I can't sleep either."

That drew Hinata's head up to stare at his form on the bed, only slightly darker than the darkness surrounding it. "R-really? Why?"

"Well…" Embarrassment dripped from Konohamaru's words as he reached up and ruefully scratched the back of his head. "It's a first for me, too, you know? Having a girl sleep over."

"But you s-said Moegi comes over all the t-time?"

"Yeah, but that's different. Moegi's almost like one of the guys, and she's older. She's already out of school, almost Neji's age. You're the same age as me - just about - and you're- well, you're really cute, Hinata. I really like you. And you're sleeping in my room. So yeah, I'm really nervous. Enough to make it hard to breathe, let alone sleep."

Hinata's face grew progressively redder during his speech, until by the end of it, steam was practically pouring out of her ears. "R… r-r-really… you… um…"

"I made you uncomfortable, didn't I? Damn it. Sorry, Hinata. I didn't mean to." Konohamaru jumped down from his bed and laid a gentle hand on her upper arm. "Let me make it up to you, okay? I'll get you a glass of water or something."

A sense of relief passed over Hinata, though her arm tingled where Konohamaru's hand was touching her. She quickly nodded in agreement, only to remember that he couldn't see her. "Yes, p-please."

He pulled her up off the mattress and led her out of the room, where a faint light from a tiny lamp plugged into a wall socket illuminated their surroundings enough that she didn't need to be led anymore. He didn't let go of her hand, however, and Hinata found herself blushing even harder than she had been before when they finally made it to the kitchen. Here he had to let go of her to reach into a cabinet for a glass, and she took her hand back and rubbed it softly with the fingers of her opposite hand as if that could push away the lingering tingles that plagued her.

"Here you are." His voice was louder now, no longer worried about waking the two sleeping occupants of his room. Hinata jumped at the sound, then reached for the glass without looking him in the eye. Their fingers brushed as she took it from him, and Hinata almost dropped it, but caught it just in time, fighting off the slipperiness of the condensation that had already formed on the chill glass despite how short a time ago Konohamaru had filled it.

The cool liquid felt wonderful slipping down her throat. Hinata took several greedy gulps before she noticed Konohamaru getting a glass for himself.

"You d-don't have to stay w-with me," she suddenly blurted out. "I m-mean, don't f-feel like you n-need to… keep me c-company or anything. I'm f-fine by myself."

But Konohamaru waved off her worries with a dismissive hand. "Nah, it's cool. I already said that I was having trouble sleeping myself, didn't I?"

Hinata didn't have a response to that, so she took cover behind her glass of water and quickly drank the rest of it. When she was done, she noticed that Konohamaru had already finished and placed his glass in the counter, so she placed hers next to it, careful not to let them touch.

"How about it? You think you can get to sleep now?"

Hinata tugged her arms around herself like a protective barrier as she considered. One of her hands landed on her neck, close to her pulse, and she felt that it was hammering even harder than before. Rueful and a little embarrassed, she shook her head. "S-sorry. I'm s-still pretty wound up."

"That's okay; I doubt I could sleep yet either," Konohamaru admitted. There was a beat of silence before he suggested, "Maybe we could watch another movie? You know, just until we feel like we can sleep."

Hinata's nose wrinkled slightly. "But won't that w-wake the others?"

"We'll pick a quiet movie, then. And they're pretty heavy sleepers anyway. How about it?"

After a slight hesitation, Hinata nodded. "O-okay."

Before she knew it, she was standing in front of the massive shelf with the vast collection of DVDs for the second time that night, but this time Konohamaru was by her side. Fighting not to let their elbows touch, Hinata ran a finger down the length of a shelf, touching the spine of every case. Like before, she didn't recognize any of the movies, so she didn't know which ones would fit their criteria.

"H-how about this one?" She whispered, holding up a movie with a giant robot on the cover.

Konohamaru only had to take one glance at the cover to veto it. "The director of that one is Michael Bay; he's big into explosions."

"Oh." Hinata quickly reshelved the robot movie and pulled out another at random. "This?"

"Quentin Tarantino. He likes machine guns. Probably not the best if we're going for quiet."

"O-okay." This time, Hinata tilted her head to the side and read the titles of the movies before selecting one, hoping that it would help her pick one on the quieter side. _Predator_ … probably that wouldn't fit the bill… _The Matrix_ … nope, that one probably wasn't good either… oh, wait, what was this? _The King's Speech_?

Hinata pulled it from the shelf and held it out for her partner's approval. "This?"

Konohamaru's eyebrows crept up his forehead, and Hinata sighed and pulled it back. "S-sorry. This one's n-no good either, r-right?"

"No, it's fine," he replied, surprising her. "It's just… I don't know if you would like this movie."

"Why n-not?"

"Because… um…" Konohamaru bit his lip uncertainty. "Well, it's about a man - the King of England, to be precise - overcoming a… a speech impediment. A stutter."

"O-oh." Hinata found that that was all she could say; any more words that tried to make it out of her mouth, she was sure, would come up against the insurmountable obstacle of her leaden tongue, now twice as powerful in her acknowledgment of its hold over her, and come out mangled, if at all.

"But we can watch it if you want!" Konohamaru blurted out, waving appeasing hands at her. "I didn't mean to say-! I just thought it might be an uncomfortable subject for you-!"

Wordlessly, still not trusting her voice, Hinata shoved the DVD case into Konohamaru's grasp. His breath caught in his throat, but he soon recovered and nodded.

"Oh- okay then."

Hinata settled herself down on the couch as Konohamaru stuck the disk in the machine. As it was loading, he turned back to her, and she could see it on his face as he was deciding where he should sit. Sit next to her, and risk making her more nervous, or sit on a different piece of furniture and risk offending her?

To make the decision easier for him, Hinata shifted about an inch to the side in a clear invitation to share the couch, and Konohamaru grinned before dropping down next to her. Hinata tucked her legs up under herself and settled back into the couch as the movie started.

Despite the subject matter, which did hit uncomfortably close to home for her, Hinata did find herself enjoying the movie. It was both captivating and soothing, so she found her head drooping to the side and yawn after yawn splitting her face wide open as tiredness from the day finally overtook her. At some point, though she wasn't sure when, her leaning head found a perch on Konohamaru's shoulder. Slowly, her blinks became longer and more frequent, until she was spending more time with her eyes shut then open. Eventually, they refused to open again, and she fell asleep right there, leaning on Konohamaru's shoulder with the ending of _The King's Speech_ playing in the background.

* * *

"...the cutest thing ever?"

"Shh, Moegi! You'll wake them up!"

"Nah, they look like they're out cold. I wonder how late they stayed up? Or what they were _doing_?"

"I think it's obvious that they were just watching another movie. Get your head out of the gutter, Moegi. Hinata's too shy to do anything like that."

"Way to kill my dreams, Udon."

There was a quick pause in the conversation, punctuated by the rustling of cloth.

"What are you doing?"

"Isn't it obvious? I'm taking a picture! This is just too cute not to preserve for posterity!"

"I think you mean blackmail."

"Same thing."

The click of a shutter caused Hinata to wrinkle her nose in distaste of wakefulness. Yawning, she pushed herself off of the pillow she was resting on - how she'd ever fallen asleep on it, she didn't know, because it was extremely uncomfortable, full of lumps and hard bits - and opened her eyes. She was in the couch in the living room - had she really fallen asleep in the living room? She couldn't remember - and Moegi was across from her, grinning as she lowered her phone.

"Morning, Sleeping Beauties."

It took several seconds for the plural to register in Hinata's foggy early-morning mind, but when it did, it shook her wide awake with a jolt of adrenaline. Next to her, she heard a distinctly masculine groan and a muttered plea for "just five more minutes", and she scrambled away from it as quickly as her position allowed. In the process, she accidentally kicked whoever had made the noise and then fell off the couch, where she landed hard on her butt and was given a good look back onto the couch, where Konohamaru was doubled up from the force of her accidental kick.

For a moment, Hinata's mind was blank, completely devoid of any emotion except the dull thought of _no wonder I thought my pillow was uncomfortable,_ then the expected and inexorable fear and shame began to set in. Her shoulders hunched, arms shaking, as words of self-loathing began to run through her mind.

 _You fell asleep on him? How stupid can you get! Because of that, he had to sleep out here, not in his own_ comfortable _bed like he should have! I bet he was just too afraid of waking you up, so he had to bear your dead weight and your uncomfortable position all night! Stupid! Useless! Can't you do anything right?_

"Well, that's one way to wake up," Moegi laughed - jeered, Hinata's mind supplied - as Konohamaru straightened up with a groan.

"What happened?"

"That's what we want to know," Udon called from across the room. "We woke up and you were gone, only to find you curled up out here with Hinata!"

"So spill!" Moegi added. "What happened last night?"

"Nothing!" Konohamaru quickly insisted, throwing both hands into the air in a gesture of innocence. "Neither of us could sleep, so we both came out to get a glass of water and we just ended up watching another movie and fell asleep on the couch! That's it!"

"Methinks the man doth protest too much."

"Lay off, Moegi! Nothing happened, okay?"

Hinata shook, her whole body spasming so hard she thought it might come apart at the seams. Her mouth was open, ready and waiting to apologize, to ask forgiveness, to say something, _anything_ , but nothing would come out. Finally, Konohamaru's gaze lighted on her form, huddled on the ground, and a look of concern crossed his face.

"Hey, Hinata, are you alright? You didn't hurt yourself, did you?"

He leaned down towards her, and Hinata instinctively tried to scuttle away, her feet clad in socks slipping against the floor and making it difficult for her to make it far. Her breath came in sharp, ragged pants, almost sobs, each one like a thrust of a knife into her lungs, as she stared up at him, her eyes wide and pupils blown so large, they almost eclipsed her pale irises.

"Hinata! What's wrong?!"

This time, his tone alerted Moegi and Udon and they focused their attention on her as well, coming forward to surround her like a legion of vultures, circling a dying animal as if to mock its weakness. She shuddered as Konohamaru slipped off the couch and kneeled in front of her with a worried expression, flinching away from him when he offered a hand to help her up only to run up against Moegi's legs behind her.

The feeling of being trapped escalated. Hinata wrapped both her hands around her throat as her vocal chords started to spasm without her consent, dragging fluttering sounds with no meaning behind them from her aching mouth. She squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn't have to see the hurt that had descended on Konohamaru's face after she had drawn away from him.

Suddenly, hands were on her back, slipping under her arms to drag her upright. She tried to fight them off, but they were too strong and before she knew it, she was on her feet again, gasping for air as her head swam with dizziness from the swift transition to being upright. Her eyes popped open from the shock, and she saw that it was Udon who had pulled her up off the floor, and it was him that seemed to have the best understanding of what was going on.

"Back off, guys! Let her have some space! Hinata, I need you to focus on the sound of my voice. Do you know where you are right now? Is that why you're nervous?"

Hinata quickly nodded her head, then shook it, hoping that he would understand that she was answering both of his questions and not changing her mind. Luckily, it seemed to get through to him, and he nodded before leading her to the couch and crouching down in front of her.

"Do you need something from any of us? Glass of water, paper bag, anything from your duffle? Do you take any medication for this kind of stuff?"

A vigorous shake of her head almost caused Hinata to overbalance, but she caught herself just in time. "J-j-j-ju-ust-t s-s-sp-spa-c-c-ce," she finally managed to grit out from between her uncooperative tongue, chattering teeth and clenched jaw.

Instantly Udon backed away from her to join the concerned onlookers behind him. Hinata squeezed her eyes shut as if shutting out the sight of her audience would make them disappear so she could panic in peace, but she could still feel the weight of their gazes on her as she tried unsuccessfully to slow her breathing down into the meditative pattern Neji had taught her to control her attacks. It was very rare that she had one when he wasn't around to talk her out of it, even rarer that it was in front of someone else, and unheard of that it was someone outside her family. Her cheeks burned in a humiliation that had been drummed into her by the elders from her childhood: _A Hyuuga is perfect. To be less than perfect is to be weak. Be ashamed of your weaknesses, so you have the drive to overcome them._

The problem was that Hinata had never been able to overcome her stutter, no matter hard she tried.

Instead of controlling her breathing, which was abjectly not working, Hinata held her breath, locking all flow of air from her lungs in an attempt to calm her racing heart. Her face slowly started to turn numb from the lack of oxygen and she could almost feel the bluish tint creeping into her lips, but she just hid her face in her hands so the others wouldn't see her air-deprived face and kept at it until she felt her heartbeat artificially slow from a panic-induced race to a sluggish crawl. Only when spots appeared in front of her vision did she finally allow herself to breathe again. Immediately, her heart rate kicked up again, but not as fast as it had been before, so Hinata knew she was out of the danger zone. The tears that had been prickling at the corners of her eyes finally began to fall and a sob worked its way out of her throat, the final sign that she was over the attack enough for her throat to loosen and allow sound to pass unhindered.

"Hinata? Are you alright?"

Without even looking up, Hinata could tell that it was Konohamaru who had settled down on his knees in front of her, his hand settling on her leg with a gentle, comforting warmth. She flinched at the contact, and he swiftly removed it. The spot felt cold without the protective cover that had previously shielded it from the ambient air.

"...Hinata?"

It was the worry in his tone, pure and unselfish, that did it. Hinata curled down over herself and sobbed, the tears rolling down her face in fat drops that she couldn't stop even if she'd wanted to. She felt, rather than saw, Konohamaru flinch at the sound, his hand hovering over her hunched shoulder for an uncertain second before settling gently down on it. Like before, Hinata flinched and drew even more tightly in on herself at the contact, but unlike before, the comforting weight refused to move, sending a shock of warmth to her cold core.

"Hinata, I am so so sorry, I had no idea this would be so hard for you! I shouldn't have invited you and made you feel like you had to come when it would make you this upset! I'm so sorry; it's all my fault…"

He kept babbling, and all Hinata caught over and over again was his shaken apology. Her eyes widened when she realized that he was truly upset that she was crying and not disgusted by her weakness. That thought alone was enough to get to her raise her head, despite her reddened eyes and tearstained cheeks, and grab his hand, bringing his babbling to a rapid halt.

"Y-you d-don't have t-to ap… app-po… pol… say sorry!" She finally managed to spit out, changing the words when the first one refused to make its way out of her throat, still too tense from her earlier attack. "It's my f-fault for b-being so s-stupid and-d useless and n-nervous and-"

But Konohamaru cut her off before she could get any further, not with his words, but with a hug tight enough to squeeze the remaining breath from her body.

"You're not stupid or useless, Hinata," he whispered near her ear. "You're shy, but you're also one of the bravest people I know because you're willing to stand up to your fears."

"B-but I'm n-not," Hinata gasped. "You c-can't say that… you d-don't know-w how m-much I l-let other p-p-people fight-t my b-battles for me! N-Neji…"

"Neji isn't here now, is he?"

That drew Hinata up short. It was true, Neji wasn't here, and she'd decided to come in part to prove both to herself and to him that she wasn't a child who needed his absolute protection anymore. But she was proving right now that the opposite was the truth, wasn't she?

As if guessing what was going through her head, Konohamaru gave her a light squeeze without saying anything. She let out a tiny sniffle, hoping that she wasn't ruining Konohamaru's shirt with her tears and snotty nose, before tensing slightly to pull away. Instantly, he let go of her and let her pull back to wipe her nose and cheeks.

"And I really do want to apologize, Hinata," he added seriously in the face of her tearstained eyes. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable at all with how I acted last night. I won't let it happen again, I swear."

In spite of her tears, Hinata couldn't help tilting her head a half a degree to the side in confusion. "Wha… what?"

An answering frown of confusion spread across Konohamaru's face. "You know, how I made you nervous when you woke up this morning and you panicked. It was because you were too close to me when you were sleeping, right? I'll make sure it doesn't happen again."

A flash of panic raced through Hinata before she could diagnose its source. "No!" She almost shouted, then blushed furiously at the stunned look on Konohamaru's face and the barely muffled laugh from Moegi, just out of her line of sight. She ignored their audience, though, and foraged ahead, stumbling and red. "I- I m-mean, that's… that's n-not why…. I didn't mind that part!"

"You… you didn't?" Barely constrained hope registered in Konohamaru's gaze.

"N-no! It was j-just… w-waking up s-so suddenly, and- w-well, I, um-m…" She floundered in her words for a moment, but the eagerly ernest expression on Konohamaru's face melted away the majority of the rest of her fear and she somehow found the courage to push forward. "I w-was w-worried that-t I'd m-made you sleep out here and-d you d-didn't want t-to b-because you c-couldn't m-move m-me… or m-made you get a c-cramp in your sh-shoulder because I was l-leaning on you, or… s-something… like… th-that…. And-d then I got n-nervous because I w-was nervous and I th-thought m-maybe you… wouldn't… l-like me… anymore… if you… knew…."

Hinata trailed off as her courage started melting away again in the face of Konohamaru's unblinking expression, her gaze skirting away so she didn't have to look at his face. She only looked up again when he grabbed her shoulders, blinking in the face of his blinding grin.

"Is that the only thing? Oh, Hinata, you've got nothing to worry about! In fact, I actually think I was the one who fell asleep first!"

"R-really?"

"Yeah! I mean, I _never_ would have been able to fall asleep if I knew you were sleeping on my shoulder! I'd be more nervous than you are now!"

Hinata couldn't help but blush even harder at that admission, the red flush that had only just started to fade from her cheeks coming back in full force. She had been around Konohamaru enough already that the frankness of the admission shouldn't have surprised her, but it did. Despite her red cheeks, she felt a tiny smile lift up the corners of her mouth.

"You know," a voice interrupted them from behind - masculine, so Udon - causing them both to jump, "this is the part where the hero usually kisses the heroine, Konohamaru."

This time, Hinata wasn't the only person to flush and stutter.

"I wouldn't-! Udon-! How could you say that I… that I… do that!"

"B-b-b-but…! I-I-I…! Th-th-that's…!"

He held his hands up in surrender, a knowing smirk decorating his features. "Just a suggestion."

"But now that we've got you calmed down, Hinata," Moegi added, "I want you to know that we're not upset that you were nervous. We knew this would be hard for you, and we understand and want to help you. So don't ever be afraid to be scared or nervous in front of us. We'll never be angry for something you can't control. The only thing we'd ever care about is if you were uncomfortable and tried to hide it from us."

Moegi's voice was gentle, suddenly reminding Hinata inexplicably of Neji. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes again, and she had to swipe a hand across her cheeks to push them aside as she nodded at the words.

Noticing her new tears, Konohamaru leaned forward with a concerned expression. "Hinata, are you okay?"

"Y-yeah," she replied with a small watery smile. "Th-these are h-happy tears."

Relief etched itself into Konohamaru's face, and he settled back on his haunches in front of her with a grin. Suddenly grinning mischievously, her earlier seriousess gone, Moegi approached them with her phone outstretched.

"I might have to concur with Udon about the kiss, though. You guys were absolutely _adorable_ on the couch together. Want to see?"

The phone was extended to Konohamaru first, and within a few seconds of looking at it, his face was starting to pinken. Hinata felt her own cheeks heat up a few degrees just by looking at his embarrassment, and found herself wondering what the picture could possibly contain to make him look like that. Her question was answered, however, in a few seconds when he passed the phone to her, reddening even further when their fingers brushed together.

Hinata was probably luck if her entire face didn't resemble a tomato after getting a single glance at the picture. Sometime during the movie, she had tucked her legs up underneath her and without realizing it, she'd leaned against Konohamaru's left shoulder, her head tilted to the side and hair brushing his neck. His left arm, which she vaguely remembered him laying across the top of the couch at the beginning of the movie, had fallen down and was curled around her shoulders, keeping her tight against him. What really drew her eye, however, was their hands resting together on his knee, her fingers interwoven with those of his right hand.

Hinata quickly passed the phone back to Moegi, not trusting herself to speak. In front of her, Konohamaru looked like he was in the same boat as she was. It seemed like he wanted to look at her and gauge her reaction, but every time his eyes swept near her face, they skittered away like mice afraid of the stomping feet of an elephant. Her own eyes flying from object to object as well in second hand embarrassment, Hinata's gaze suddenly landed on the clock across the room, and she gasped when she saw the number, feeling like a large bucket of ice water had been dumped down her back.

"Why didn't anyone t-tell me it was almost nine? I have to l-leave soon!"

Konohamaru jerked to his feet with a half completed swear - cut off as soon as his gaze had skittered past Hinata - and held a hand out to her to pull her to her feet. The rest of the morning was passed in frantic motion, changing out of her pajamas, brushing her teeth and eating a hurried breakfast, before she was once again back in the car with Konohamaru driving her home, only a few minutes later than she wanted to leave. All too soon - though they were almost late - they pulled back into the back entrance to the Hyuuga compound, and Konohamaru got out of the driver's seat and ran around to open Hinata's door before she could get it.

"Th-thank you," she whispered, looking anywhere but at his face.

"No problem." Konohamaru opened the back door and grabbed her bag, then held it out to her. "Here."

"Th-thanks. Again."

"Don't mention it."

Their conversation fizzled out, but neither of them made any move to move away. Shuffling her feet in the damp dust of the path, Hinata flicked her eyes up to gauge the pink in Konohamaru's cheeks as he scratched the back of his head uncomfortably.

"Um-!" She started at the same time he said, "So," then both of them laughed a little and backed off.

"Sorry, Hinata. You go first."

She shook her head. "N-no, you."

"Um, okay then." He dropped his hand to his side. "I know this morning you… well, this morning wasn't the most pleasant for you, but I'd thought that… maybe… you'd had fun last night, so I was wondering… would you ever be interested in doing it again? Or just coming over and hanging out without sleeping over?"

Warmth blossomed in Hinata's chest. "Absolutely," she said with no hesitation, her cheeks clear of any marks of embarrassment.

If anything, it was Konohamaru who was taken aback by her eager reply. "R-really?!"

"Of course!"

"Like, soon?"

"Yeah!"

"Like… tomorrow?"

 _Tomorrow?_ But looking into Konohamaru's nervous eyes, Hinata felt any doubts she may have had melt away. "Sure!"

"That's… that's awesome!" He made as if to give her a hug, but stopped just short of actually touching her. "Ah, sorry."

Hinata's hands shook. She took a deep breath, then dropped her bag on the ground and rose up on her tiptoes, wrapping her arms around Konohamaru's much wider shoulders. He appeared frozen for a second, then his stature thawed and he returned the squeeze with a whisper.

"Thanks, Hinata."

"Th-that's what I should be saying," she whispered back.

They stayed like that for a few more seconds before Hinata pulled back, her face a delicate shade of pink.

"I should p-probably…"

"Yeah, of course." He stood back, allowing her to take several steps backwards toward the compound.

With one final smile in her direction, Konohamaru waved and made his way back to the driver's seat. Just before he got in, however, Hinata couldn't help but call out to him one last time.

"K-Konohamaru?"

He turned back, his eyes bright. "Yeah?"

"Um…" Hinata allowed her bangs to hide her eyes for a few moments before taking a deep breath and pushing them out of the way. "You know the m-movie we watched last night? About the king with the… with the… st-stutter?"

"What about it?"

"I remember they d-did a few things to help him using… using m-music, and I was thinking m-maybe I could… t-try some of them, and m-maybe… you c-could… help me."

Konohamaru blinked once, and Hinata felt her heart sink somewhere down to the region of her toes, then he grinned all at once. "Yeah! That sounds awesome!"

Relief blinded Hinata, and she nodded almost violently. "G-great! So, t-tomorrow?"

"Yeah! Tomorrow, then!"

"O-okay! Um, bye!"

After spitting out her awkward farewell, Hinata turned and practically fled up the steps until she could slam the door behind her, dropping her bag on the floor and laying her back against the interior of the door. When she got up the courage, she peeked through the window just in time to see Konohamaru woop and punch his fist into the sky before getting into the van and driving away.

Hinata's heartbeat slowly began to come down to its normal rate, a tempo it hadn't gone since she'd walked out the door over twelve hours previously. She was home; home meant safety, and as relaxed as she could get. Still… she couldn't help but wish that time could have gone a little slower.

Taking a deep breath to steady her shaking hands, Hinata put the past twelve hours out of her mind and started down the hallway. If she didn't hurry, she would be late for her lessons, and if she ever wanted to be allowed to stay over again, she couldn't renege on the one promise her father had required.


	25. To Fight or Not to Fight

Hey! Look at that! That was pretty quick, huh?

Thanks to everyone who welcomed me back from my super-long-chapter haul! I'll be back soon again!

Hope you enjoy! Addi out!

* * *

The trail Neji followed was thick, fresh, like a black smear of pitch against the sidewalk. He traced it with his gaze for another block before allowing the muscles around his eyes to relax, dismissing his power so his face had lost all ethereal qualities when he pushed the sunglasses resting on his nose up to his forehead.

"Another block, then a left at the next intersection."

" _Another_ left?" Sasuke slouched a little lower, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his sweatshirt, looking particularly rough around the edges next to Neji's sharp suit. "How much longer are we going to follow this trail? We already know where the wraiths are, and they aren't here; so why are we?"

Neji flipped his sunglasses back down over his eyes to hide his irritated expression. "We're monitoring, like I said before. We need to know more before we can make any kind of move, like if they've managed to swell their numbers any, and if we're going to need to call for backup before taking them on."

"We can't! You said-!"

"I said I understand your point, Sasuke, nothing more. I can see why you wouldn't want to involve others and I agree with you, but the fact remains that we very obviously aren't strong enough to take them on ourselves, and I am not going to prioritize the existence of someone who has already died once over my own life."

Sasuke clammed up with a twisted expression on his face, and Neji sighed. He'd taken Itachi's rejection almost worse than he had the first time, when he'd called him up a crying mess. There was nothing, Neji knew, that would heal that wound but time. He turned his back on his younger partner and started walking.

"Come on. The faster we move, the quicker we can be done."

It took a few seconds, and Neji almost let his own strides falter, fearing that he would leave Sasuke behind, but eventually he heard the stirring of footsteps and Sasuke ran a few paces to catch up with before resuming his normal walking speed. Trying not to let his relief out in an audible form, Neji squared his shoulders and once again pushed his sunglasses up so he could survey the ground in front of him without the obstruction.

When he stopped at the intersection, Sasuke almost walked into him from behind, and Neji had to grit his teeth to stop from snapping something callus at the young man, reminding himself that he was in great emotional turmoil. His flaring annoyance under control, he pushed the button for the crosswalk and took the moment to study his surroundings for any more signs of abnormal spectral activity. He found none, as he expected, and he was just about to turn back to the crosswalk when a spark of something pricked at the farthest edges of his consciousness. WIth a frown, he turned to the opposite side of the intersection, the way they would go if they made a right turn instead of a left one.

It looked substantially seedier than the area they were currently traversing. Flipping his sunglasses back down, Neji murmured a quiet, "Byakugan," under his breath and felt the veins stand out around his eyes as his spectral vision returned to him.

It was very tiny, but there was a second trail branching out from the one they were currently following. It looked even fresher than the dark one underneath their feet, though much thinner, like it had been made by a single ghost traveling at high speed instead of a group searching slowly. He expanded his senses, following the trail as it wound through back alleyways too dark for any kind of upstanding citizen until he lost it in a mess of congealed darkness from the residue of a thousand wicked spectral auras, built up over the past several hundred years.

Sasuke bumped him in the side with his elbow, causing him to drop his Byakugan with a start. "Hey, it's our turn."

"Hm…" Neji pushed his sunglasses up and made a snap decision. "We're not going that way."

"We're not?"

"No, we're not." Neji pointed down the second trail. "We're going that way."

Sasuke regarded the dark road with narrowed eyes for a few seconds before shaking his head. "Whatever you've found, it's a trap."

"You think I don't know that?" Neji scoffed. "That's why we're going to be _careful_."

"I don't think that's how it works-"

"Shut up, Sasuke." Neji flipped his sunglasses back down and reactivated his eyes. "We're not going far, just until I can see where the trap is set up. Then we'll turn right around and _call for backup_."

He started down the alleyway with brisk steps, and within a few paces he heard Sasuke follow him, albeit reluctantly. The trail was erratic, unlike the straight trail they had been following before, tracing across the street and back more times than he could count, sometimes doubling back on itself and even darting in and out of the walls of the buildings lining the alley, as if whoever it was they were following was suffering from some kind of mad fever that caused them to move without direction. A frown graced Neji's lips as he walked down the alleyway at a good clip and turned the corner into an even smaller and seedier one, still following the trail. What had possessed the ghost to move like that? Were they looking for something? Chasing something? Or perhaps… running away?

He could tell that the mess of congealed auras the trail led into was the trap. With that many layers of fetid spectral energy it would be almost impossible for him to pinpoint a single one accurately, there was so way it couldn't be. Neji slowed his steps, not wanting to get too close to it. It appeared to bleed up from underground, bubbling up through cracks in the sidewalk like swamp gas in a murky bog. An old sewer, perhaps? Or an abandoned underground subway tunnel?

Something flicked at the edges of Neji's consciousness again, and he came to a halt so abrupt Sasuke walked right into his back with a curse.

"What the Hell, Neji! Again?!"

But this time, Neji had to words with which to return fire. His feet were rooted to the ground as he concentrated on the flutter of energy just far enough away that he would miss it if he wasn't paying attention. It felt like the one that had originally lured him to check out the shady path, but there was something different about it that he couldn't quite place. A delicate shading to the aura, perhaps. If the first one had been black streaked through with the faintest hints of red and orange, this was black with streaks of a silvery blue.

A paralyzing sense of fear crawled over Neji as he felt another aura flick at the extremities of his consciousness, this time with almost childlike streaks of cobalt and from behind them. The silvery blue-black aura flickered again, to his left now, and soon after the one with flicks of flaming red and orange came again, to his right. They were surrounded, the only way out the way forward, into the cesspit of malignant spectral energy. His hand trembling, Neji reached for his phone as casually as he could, so as not to alert their audience as to what he was trying to do.

He had been wrong. The place with the layered black auras so thick he couldn't see through them wasn't the trap. In fact, even the trail leading to it wasn't a trap. The whole city was the trap, with the bait of the fires spread out for them to notice. It was a trap for them and them alone, since they were the only ones who would be able to recognize them for what they truly were: the work of a pyrokinetic wraith.

No, not a trap. An ambush.

The Akatsuki had likely known they were there from the moment their planes landed.

Neji slipped his phone out of his pocket and unlocked it as casually as he could. "Hey, Sasuke?" He asked as he opened an app on his phone, unused but mandatory for all Hyuuga to keep, and found the contact he was looking for, proud of how light his voice sounded despite the underlying tension.

"Yeah, Neji?"

He opened a message to the contact and typed three letters before hitting send. "We may have to run soon."

"What?"

The orange infused aura from behind them suddenly twisted, and a fireball shot into the sky from the force of an explosion on a rooftop two blocks back the direction they had came. Yep, they had definitely figured out that Neji now knew they were there and what he'd just done. He pushed his phone back in his pocket and turned to run back the way they had come, but the three color-streaked black auras were darting towards them at full speed now, and he knew they wouldn't be able to make it in time. A quick glance in the opposite direction, towards the pitch-smeared section of town, proved Neji's suspicions right: there was no one in that direction, meaning that they were being herded there.

Neji heard it in Sasuke's breathing when he noticed the auras as well, his voice catching in fear. "N… Neji? What do we do?"

Herded or no, they couldn't just stand there and wait for their fates to be handed to them on a bloodstained silver platter. They were already trapped, so what difference did it make where they ran?

"Run," he said, and ran towards the center of the maze.

* * *

A whine assaulted Shikamaru's ears, and he looked down to find its source and almost blinked in surprise when he saw the ghost dangling from his grasp. Right. He'd forgotten it was there. He gave his hand an experimental squeeze and its eyes bulged out of its head slightly.

"Pl… please…" it begged, but Shikamaru paid its cries no mind.

With a bored expression on his face, Shikamaru conjured up a noose made out of shadow directly over the ghost's neck and gave the end a sharp yank. Had it been still alive, the force would have been enough to snap a spine: an instant kill. As it was, its neck bent at an awkward angle and an expression of pain and terror crossed its face for an instant before a colorless sphere of nothingness exploded in the center of its stomach, imploding it into a void of existence like a black hole sucking something up from the inside. His lip curling up in distaste, Shikamaru wiped his hands on the edges of his tattered army jacket.

His army jacket. Huh. He hadn't noticed shifting into it. It must have happened sometime during his flashback. He shrugged his shoulders to relieve some of the tension using his shadows had brought him and looked around at the specters and figures cringing down at his feet. Low-class spirits, all of them. Nothing he'd done that day had been worth his time. They were all too weak.

"Um, ex-excuse me, M-Master," a nervous voice echoed from down by his feet.

Surprised to hear the voice speak, Shikamaru flicked a single, dispassionate glance down at him. "What do you want?"

"W-well, um, M-Master asked for all names and locations of those Late Master saw as equal or threat… and he was the last of 'em."

Shikamaru couldn't help blinking in surprise. " _All_ of them? Every last one?"

"Y-yes, M-Master. Every… every one in this section of the city."

"That's disappointing." And here Shikamaru had thought that he was going to get at least a few days of amusement out of this game, instead of a paltry seven hours. He had to stifle a sigh; this was why he didn't like to go full out, no matter how fun it seemed at the time.

"And, ah…" the ghost swallowed nervously. Shikamaru noticed that one of his eyes was perpetually shut more than the other, and it appeared to be a tic he couldn't control. That's right; hadn't the some of others called him Squint before? "And why is that disappointing, Master?"

"Because now I'm going to have to go somewhere else."

There was a harsh intake of air from around the room. In addition to the three spectral subordinates he'd stolen from the first draugr he'd ended, he'd gained eight more from various others for a total of eleven.

Squint, who seemed to have been unanimously elected the spokesperson of the group, swallowed with difficulty before speaking again, trying unsuccessfully to hide the hope from his voice. "Will Master search elsewhere for more opponents worthy of his strength?"

Hiding a small smile at his tone, Shikamaru looked up at the ceiling. Even if it hadn't been there, it was still light out, so he wouldn't be able to see the stars. Still, he couldn't help but picture crawling thunderheads and flashes of bright lightening amid the darkness.

"No," he said. "No, I'm not looking for opponents to test my strength. After all, the greatest form of strength is not besting others, but knowing when to concede."

The specters shuffled slightly as they glanced among themselves. "Then why do what you're doing?" One from a far back row asked nervously, shifting uncomfortably as Shikamaru's gaze fell on him.

Thunder boomed across the muddy terrain, and a flash of lightning illuminated Hoffstead's terrified expression. Shikamaru looked at him, then looked away, unable to meet his gaze.

In some ways, Neji reminded him of Hoffstead. Shikamaru could admit that he wasn't the most capable man when it came to his own emotions, preferring to manipulate others' instead, but he was certain that he had loved Hoffstead, in a way. Just as he was now certain that he cared for Neji. What was it that Neji had accused him of not having? A protective instinct?

"I do it to protect someone. Someone who means more to me than I can ever say."

That was obviously not the answer they were expecting. He could see it in their eyes, their shifting expressions: _Perhaps, if he's doing this out of love, he will be reasonable. Perhaps he will be a good Master._

Shikamaru almost felt bad to crush their hopes.

"So…" Squint ventured, "You're leaving? Are you taking us with you, or…" He trailed off, poorly disguised eagerness in his tone.

 _Little shit._ He knew that they couldn't leave their section of the city, and he knew Shikamaru knew it as well. He was probably hoping that when he left, Shikamaru would leave him in charge. He was a relatively weak ghost, no match for any of the one the phantom had ended that day, but strong enough to be a contender amongst the bottom-feeders here. Well, he couldn't allow that to happen. There was a reason ghosts like these tended to break up in factions and fight one another: so they wasted their energy fighting others like them and didn't terrorize the weaker ghosts in the same area. Forming a single, cohesive group out of the remnants before him would be like signing all their death warrants, and as callus a Shikamaru was, he wasn't that cruel.

"Unfortunately," Shikamaru said as he strode towards the door, "Neither of those are viable options right now. You can't come with me, and I can't leave you to your own devices either, not with the behavior you showed me earlier. That leaves me with only one option, though I am loath to take it. I am sorry."

"Wh-what? Master!" Squint tried to struggle to his feet, but was cut of by a twist of shadow that wrapped around him and squeezed his throat closed. A few seconds later, he had disappeared in a flash of black and the shadow dissipated on the ground before flowing back to Shikamaru.

There was almost two full seconds of silence before the entire crowd of spirits erupted into shouts and screams. Some ran at him, whether to beg for their lives or try to avenge their fallen comrade Shikamaru didn't know, but he ended them anyway with a twist of his wrist and a flare of shadow. It was over within a minute, every ghost that had once stood in the room besides him gone into a void of nothingness.

It left a bad taste in Shikamaru's mouth. It was for the best that the more violent ghosts of the area develop from the ground up again, he told himself, for the protection of the smaller ghosts, the weaker ones, but the words rang hollow in his own mind. The shadows that hung around him sank into the ground and his tattered army coat dissolved in a wisp of smoke to something more casual.

A tiny sniffle caught his attention. Looking up, Shikamaru discovered the ghost of a small ghost, a young girl of perhaps seven or eight, peeking through the wall at him with a terrified froen expression. When his gaze met hers, she shrank back in fear, but didn't flee.

Taking a step forward and licking his lips, Shikamaru started, "Are you-?"

But before he could finish his question, the girl screamed. The sound was shrill and pierced his eardrums, causing him to wince. Without any other warning, she backpedaled through the wall and fled as quickly as she could, still screaming like she was being chased by a monster.

Shikamaru clenched his hands and jaw. He wasn't a monster. He was helping. He was protecting her by what he was doing. He was protecting Neji. He wasn't a monster.

If he was a monster, then he would have ended the little girl as well.

Taking a deep breath and then expelling it from his lungs, Shikamaru forced his body to relax. He had a job to do, more draugrs to seek out, more lives to save by ending others. He didn't have time to be thrown off his game by the opinions of little girls. He whipped the shadows up around him and sank down into the ground, disappearing without a trace.

* * *

Tokuma Hyuuga sat behind his desk and sighed deeply, quelling the urge to lay his head down on his desk. The File Operator position for New York City was just _awful_. There were too many ghosts, not enough men under his command, too much crime, not enough justice, too many incidents, not enough time, too much paperwork, not enough space to file it all, too much and not enough of everything! Right now they were even running out of ink in the printers from the mind-bogglingly huge amount of reports they were printing!

Tokuma had only been in the job for eight months and he already wanted to quit. Well, he'd wanted to quit from day one, but now he really _really_ wanted to quit. He doubted the Elders would let him, though. He'd managed to hang on for those eight months already without ending up in the hospital or suffering a mental breakdown, longer than his last five predecessors had managed and his last three had almost managed combined, and he was sure that put him in the running to keep the position permanently. The only way he'd get out of it now was if he really _did_ end up in the hospital or having a mental breakdown.

Briefly, he glanced at the partially concealed door on the other side of his office, the one that led up through the innards of the building to the rooftop before deciding against it. He wasn't that bad.

Yet. But he was getting there.

Letting out an audible groan, Tokuma lifted up the paper he had been trying to read before and attempted to force his blurry eyes to focus on it. It was a notice telling him that the File Operator from Seattle, Neji Hyuuga, was going to be in his territory for a while, following up on an interunit code orange that he'd called. The corners of his lip pulled down in distaste; he hoped Neji wouldn't find anything. It would make Tokuma look bad if someone from outside his territory identified and solved a problem before he was even aware of it.

And of all people, it had to be Neji. The boy was practically a prodigy, and with his close connection to the hereditary Main Family, there was simply no besting him. That's how he'd managed to land the prestigious Seattle File Operator position, and at such a young age as he had. Tokuma cursed silently and rubbed a hand over his tired eyes. _He_ wanted to work someplace quiet like Seattle. Or maybe Salt Lake City. Or some tiny city in California or Texas with a population of only a couple hundred thousand people - not normally big enough to warrant a File Operator, but far enough removed from everything else around it that there needed to be someone stationed there.

Or anywhere that didn't have someone stabbed to death in a back alleyway every five minutes, actually.

Well, it could have been worse. He could have been stationed in Detroit.

So engrossed in his exhausted mental griping was Tokuma that he almost didn't notice the tiny alarm sounding from his cell phone, hidden somewhere under one of the piles of uncompleted paperwork on his desk. The one that came from his computer several seconds later was extremely noticeable, however, covering his entire screen with red flashing lights and the words EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! repeated over and over again while an alarm went off and a siren blared from the landline on his desk. Cursing, he grabbed the desk phone and held it up to his ear while trying desperately to turn the rest of the alarms off.

" _Emergency notification received,_ " a robotic female voice intoned in a pleasant manner. " _Please promptly check your cellular device for further information. Emergency notification received. Please promptly check your cellular device for further information. Emergency notifi-_ "

"Alright, already!" Tokuma yelled, slamming down the receiver of his desk phone and finally cutting off the wail emanating from his computer, still desperately searching for his cell phone hidden under piles of paperwork. "Jesus! What the fuck is going on?"

When he finally found his cell and opened up the notification, Tokuma froze. It was a simple message, only three letters long, sent through a special messaging app developed specifically for the Hyuuga and only available on their phones.

 _SOS._

The message was marked as having been sent by Neji.

Tokuma swallowed against a suddenly dry throat. He'd heard of something like this happening, of course - it had been part of his training before he'd been given the job of File Operator to memorize every one of the emergency codes the Hyuuga used - but he'd never seen it in real life before, not even as part of the New York team, notorious for bad situations: an SOS, a call for help in immediate backup and extraction from a potentially fatal situation.

As soon as the shock melted from his muscles, Tokuma sprang into action. With a few economical clicks, he dismissed the flashing red lights and declarations of EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! from his screen to follow the alarm link to the software that would track the phone the alert came from. It took a few seconds to establish a connection for the computer to spit out a GPS coordinate, and he instantly sent it to every man under his command with the same alarm that he had received.

Their dots popped up on his monitor too, and he cursed again, this time not so silently. There wasn't anyone close enough! Neji's dot was moving quickly through an area of the city that they never frequented, and it would take at least twenty-five minutes for the nearest person to reach his position.

His office was close, though. He might be able to make it in fifteen, if he ran and cut through the alleys between the buildings. Just as he was standing up to grab his gear, his secretary burst through the door into his office with a panicked expression, an alarm blaring from her phone as well.

"What's happening, Tokuma?! What does this mean-?!"

"I don't have time to explain!" Tokuma barked, grabbing her and sitting her down behind his desk. She blinked at the abrupt move but didn't try to interrupt him. "Listen: There's an emergency, and I'm the closest person qualified to help. Sit here and pay attention to the screens, and if anything else happens, call me immediately and I'll tell you what to do. Okay?"

She nodded, her pale eyes wide, and Tokuma spared a second to pat her on the head before sliding his arms through his jacket sleeves, tucking the only weapon he had, a gun with six silver bullets in the clip, through his waistband to hide under his suit jacket. His hand trembled when he withdrew it, and Tokuma forced it into a fist to stop it. He'd never actually shot it at a real ghost before, just targets. That wasn't a Hyuuga's job.

But he was the only one available right now, so it fell to him.

"You'd better not fucking die before I get there, Neji," Tokuma muttered under his breath as he started out the door of his office. "Not when I'm on duty in this city."


	26. Code Red

Getting back into the swing of writing and a consistent schedule for me means more updates! Yay! I think I'm going to go back to my normal every Sunday schedule and I should be able to keep that for a while. (I know this is Monday but close enough, right?) Thanks for SoraROCK and my guest who left me wonderful words of encouragement!

* * *

Heart beating too quickly in his breast, Neji ran. Every breath he took knifed into his overused lungs like a shard of glass; the pain was so great, he felt it was a wonder blood didn't bubble over his lips and down his chin. His and Sasuke's footsteps echoed off the walls around them, the sides of buildings that stretched up far in the sky, cutting off their escape routes. Neji cursed the wraiths flying behind and to the sides of them, always just at the edges of his perception but never coming close enough for him to get an accurate read on them, and their ability to melt through the solid walls that herded Sasuke and himself where they wanted them to go.

He wasn't used to strenuous physical activity like this. Of course, Neji was fairly fit, but the role of the Hyuuga was more of a desk job, like Neji had been doing for the past several years, not active field work like this. Sasuke slowly gained on him, despite the extra weight he was carrying in the form of the satchel filled with supplies for their hunt, then passed him as his flagging feet protested the paces he put them through.

"Neji!" Sasuke gasped, and Neji felt slightly gratified to hear that his breathing was at least somewhat, if not exactly, as ragged as his own was. "Where… where are they?"

"St… still… be…hind… us…" Neji replied, his gratification melting away. He could barely _speak_ , let alone form full sentences!

"Don't fall behind, then! Come on!"

Without Neji's permission, Sasuke reached back and grabbed the sleeve of his jacket to drag him forward, deeper into the mess of dark spectral aura. He gritted his teeth in irritation; at any other time, he would have shook off the unwanted help and probably added in some biting comment for good measure, but now he was just glad for the assistance. He did need it, after all.

With Sasuke now taking responsibility of some - not a lot, but some - of the energy required to propel himself forward, Neji tried to focus on his breathing and his eyes instead. He'd dropped his Byakugan as soon as they'd begun to run, knowing it would be little use amid the camouflage of the aura-darkened alleys. Now, though, he wanted to know how close their pursuers had gotten, so he concentrated and dug up the last vestiges of power from his extremities to ignite his eyes once more with a harsh gasp.

It was only by looking backwards that Neji was actually able to make out anything of value. The three wraiths were still there, circling and threading through their trails like a trio of hungry vultures waiting for their prey to tire themselves out before swooping in for the kill. In front of them, the air was so stained with centuries of fetid aura that, for the first time in his life, Neji found it more difficult to see through with his Byakugan activated. Cursing the fact that he couldn't use it to map out the best route in the maze they found themselves in, he dropped it again, grimacing as he felt the power drain from his eyes once again, leaving them empty and dull. His head was starting to pound and the muscles around his eyes ached; he wasn't going to be able to use the Byakugan very many more times that day before he overextended himself.

The shadows around them seemed to roil in Neji's vision. The darkness was so thick that he didn't know what to look at, what to do; it was all the same, all sticky evil, a bad dead end everywhere they turned. But Sasuke was leading them now, hauling Neji along after him without giving him a chance to say which turns led to the thicker patches of congealed spectral aura. Miraculously, he managed to avoid them on his own - at least, that's the story the first three forks Sasuke took told - and Neji found his eyes drifting shut, content for Sasuke to pull him along and considering letting him decide the path they would have to take to get out of there. After all, he was doing fine, and Neji himself was exhausted and ready to drop, not to mention almost out of power from all the tracking they had already done that day before this _fucking bullshit_ ambush.

Half of Neji, the more tired and less reasonable half of him, thought this was a brilliant idea. The other half remembered exactly what had happened when he'd let Sasuke have the reins during their excursion in Konoha and smacked the first half of him upside the head for even considering it.

Neji managed to pry his eyes back open just in time to see Sasuke round a corner and prepare to dart into a side alley, one which he couldn't see the end of with his weaker powers of perception, but Neji certainly could, even without his Byakugan activated. Instinct and terror propelling more energy into his limbs than he knew he possessed in his drained body, Neji launched himself at Sasuke and smashed him into the alley wall just before he could take a step inside the treacherous side street.

"What the hell, man?!" Sasuke screeched, pushing himself away from the grimy wall with a horrified grimace and desperately trying to wipe the residue from his hands on his pants. "Fuck, that's disgusting!"

"Not… that… way…" Neji panted, doubling over almost in half and gripping his jello knees as if his anchered hands were the only things keeping him upright. "Dark… aura… probably… res…resident draugr…"

A concerned note krept into Sasuke's voice, as if he was finally paying attention to Neji's condition for the first time since they started running. "Hey, um, Neji, are you okay? You look… um…"

"I'm just peachy!" Neji snapped in between too-harsh, too-large gasps that felt like each one was driving a nine-inch nail deeper into the center of his sternum with a sledgehammer. His legs shook and a cramp was starting to form in his left calf. He should have kept running; now that they'd stopped, he didn't know if he could get himself going again.

Finally managing to straighten out his back - despite his still-wobbly legs - Neji stood up and attempted to calm his rushing heartbeat. His senses told him that the three pursuing wraiths had paused when they had, sparking a tiny thought in the back of Neji's brain that soon grew into a full-fledged suspicion. The three had rushed him and Sasuke with maddening speed and a bloodlust that spoke on an intent to kill, propelling them forward into the labyrinth. But now that they were deep inside it, they no longer felt the need to chase them. Neji's eyes narrowed; that could only mean one thing: that their job was already done, and he and Sasuke were exactly where they wanted them.

"Should we run again?" Sasuke asked quietly, his eyes searching Neji's face.

After a brief moment of consideration, Neji shook his head. "Not worth it. They're not chasing us anymore. That means we're exactly where they want us, and we need to be very careful."

"Well, shit," Sasuke cursed, his hands clenching into fists. "Any idea how we get out of this?"

Neji hesitated; he knew Sasuke wasn't going to like this. "I already sent out a request for emergency extraction. Help should be coming for us soon. We just have to hold out until then."

As Neji predicted, a flash of anger, like lightning across dark thunderclouds, swept across Sasuke's face. "You already called for backup?! Neji, how could you! We're fine; we can handle this on our own-!"

"No, we can't, you fucking idiot!" Neji yelled, cutting off Sasuke's angry tirade before he really had a chance to get into it. "I thought what happened in Konoha proved that! We are in so far over our heads, it's not even comical from an _outsider's_ point of view anymore, and you can't seem to grasp that!"

"But-!" Sasuke tried to cut in, but Neji towered over him, stabbing him in the chest with a finger.

"No! It's my turn now! You just can't seem to grasp exactly what it is we're doing here, Sasuke! We are fighting as a team, part of a well-oiled machine that has been working across the entire country for well over two centuries now, not on some mystery treasure hunt in someone's backyard! This isn't about you anymore, or your little ghost friend, or even me- this is about everyone in this city who stands to be hurt by these wraiths because we fucked up and couldn't take them down the first time- and that means we have no room for error! And that's just your problems! Mine are even bigger: I, as both the elder of this mission and the Hyuuga, your set of eyes, am tasked with protecting _you_. It's one thing if I fail in the mission, it's another thing completely if I fail and lose you doing it. Do you understand now?"

Sasuke's mouth was hanging open slightly, stunned by his words, so Neji decided to hammer one final nail in the coffin.

"We are absolutely dead if we get into a direct confrontation with them. We have neither the resources nor the number we had during our last fight, and we barely survived that. So, I think I'll take the backup right now - no matter the repercussions it might cause in other areas - if it means I don't have to die myself."

Sasuke's hands clenched at his sides, his knuckles visibly white. "This wasn't supposed to turn out like this. It's just not fair…" he whispered, and Neji's shoulders slumped in half relief, half defeat.

"Of course it isn't," he replied quietly. Sasuke's hooded eyes looked up and caught his gaze with a desolate expression. "And I wish it could be different. But if you're going to survive long in our world, you can't just play favorites and hope everything will work out. You have to fight- fight for your life."

Neji ignored the tiny voice in his brain that spoke up and reminded him that he was currently doing the exact thing with Shikamaru that he was advising Sasuke against. _Shut up. That's different. Don't ask me how; it just is._

Sasuke squeezed his eyes closed, and Neji relaxed, thinking that he'd won. _Finally_ , he though, dropping his shoulders and doing another cursory sweep of the area to find that their pursuers still hadn't moved from the place they'd been hovering at before, blocking their exit. _Now all we have to do is hold on until help arrives-_

Sasuke's eyes popped open, revealing a dark, confident fire Neji hadn't seen since their first battle with the wraiths. "I have to fight for my life, do it?" He growled low in his throat, opening his satchel and withdrawing a pair of silver knives. "Then I guess I better get to it."

Neji's breath caught in his throat; none of this was part of his plan! "Sasuke, what are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Sasuke scoffed, tucking one of the knives through a belt loop and withdrawing a third, then searching for a bit before he pulled a _gun_ from inside his satchel and shoved it through the waistband of his pants. "I'm going to fight, just like you said!"

Panic propelled Neji forward to grip the collar of Sasuke's sweatshirt, forgetting all about his own exhaustion. "Not what I meant! Metaphorically, not literally! Well, I did mean it literally, but not right here! You cannot go toe to toe with three wraiths by yourself! Please, Sasuke, listen to me!"

"Get the fuck off of me!" Sasuke shoved Neji so hard that he stumbled backwards and fell to the ground. A slow smile spread across his face as Neji's words finally sank in, a sickening grin that Neji shuddered at the sight of. "Did I hear you right? There are only _three_ of them? Why the hell are we running, then! We fought, evenly matched, with five before!"

"Because we weren't evenly matched, they just let us think we were, and we have less allies on our side now and they have an advantage because they know how our powers work now!" Neji shouted desperately, not caring that he was rambling.

But Sasuke only snorted condescendingly. "If anything, _we_ have the advantage because _we_ know how _their_ powers work now."

"It' not that easy, Sasuke! Sasuke! Listen to me!"

Neji tried to struggle to his feet, but he suddenly found himself confronted with the business end of a knife and decided against it, going cross-eyed as he tried to focus on the point.

"Shut up, Neji, just shut up!" Sasuke hissed, fury dripping from his eyes and his voice. "We've been here for _three days_ now, and all we've done is walk around in circles! Well, I'm done with tracking and trailing; we came here to find the Akatsuki and hunt them down, didn't we? Didn't we?! So that's exactly what I'm going to do!"

"Sasuke, stop it! You're being irrational-!"

"Irrational? Irrational?! I'll show you irrational!" Sasuke threw his head back and laughed, a tinney, desperate sound covering up the obvious fear that was causing his hand to shake. The point of the knife wavered in front of Neji's nose, then suddenly it was pressed against Neji's throat and Sasuke's dark eyes were mere inches away from his own, oozing hysteric confidence. "Don't try to stop me, Neji. I will warn you only once."

Neji's mouth went dry, his mouth dropping in shock as he tried to cry one more plea for Sasuke to find his right mind again, but all that came out was a harsh croak. The flat of the blade scratched against his adam's apple as he gasped for air, terrified eyes staring into Sasuke's deranged ones. After a few moments, Sasuke let out a soft _ha_ and retreated, tossing the blade he had just held against Neji's throat to him. Surprised at the move, Neji fumbled and almost dropped it on the filthy ground, but regained control of it just in time. The blade sliced a long, thin scratch down his palm from the awkward way he'd grabbed it.

Neji struggled to his feet, pressing his bleeding palm to the side of his pants in an attempt to stem the flow as Sasuke turned away from him and readjusted the strap of his satchel over his shoulders. Another pang of terror swept through Neji's chest as he looked at Sasuke's back.

"Sasuke, wait; we aren't supposed to split up!"

Sasuke cast a single glare over his shoulder. "Then keep up with me."

Then he took off running back the direction they'd come, leaving Neji rooted to the spot in shock and fear. As soon as he disappeared around the nearest corner, Neji sensed the three wraiths, who had been content to wait and herd them deeper into the maze, start into action again and dart up into the sky, conforming into one dark, spinning aura as if in preparation to drop down on Sasuke's unsuspecting head. The air froze in Neji's lungs; this wasn't, couldn't be, happening. Then the aura shot downwards in a streak of fire that Neji could see even without his Byakugan activated, and a scream pierced the filthy air.

Neji's body reacted without a thought, running towards that scream, towards certain death. If help was coming, it was coming for both of them.

"SASUKE! I'M COMING!"

* * *

Tokuma panted harshly into the filthy air of the maze of New York City back alleyways, glaring down at the red dot on his phone. When he'd first started running to Neji's location, the GPS software in the application had calculated a route for him that lead to this spot, the spot from where Neji had sent the emergency request. Now, however, the red dot that represented the tracker in Neji's phone was some quarter mile away, in the middle of a blank area in the map, meaning there was no data recorded for it to calculate the fastest route.

 _Damn it, Neji!_ He swore, shoving the now-useless phone into a pocket. _Why couldn't you just stay put and let me come for you?!_

It likely wasn't his fault, though. The space in front of him that corresponded to the blank area on the map was black as pitch, even without his eyes activated. Tokuma didn't think he wanted to know what would have caused Neji to retreat into such an area while knowing that someone was coming for him.

Gritting his teeth, Tokuma spat out, "Byakugan!"

The air around him instantly took on a myriad of colors imperceivable to the human eye, mostly fetid and dark as they oozed from the mess of twisted alleys before him. He scanned the darkness, but found nothing. It was like trying to find a needle in a sack full of pins; impossible to mistake the two when they were held side by side, but also impossible to locate one when it was swathed in an abundance of the other. He swept his gaze skyward instead, hoping that there might be some clues there he could follow in his rescue mission.

Like a trio of vultures circling some dying prey, three ghosts with jet-black auras flew through the sky. Tokuma's eyes narrowed - they were probably the reason Neji had requested the extraction - than widened as more details came into focus. Were those… wraiths? _Three_ of them?! No wonder one of the most well-respected Hyuuga, despite his age, had called for help!

Distant shouting filtered through the alleyways to Tokuma's ears, and though he couldn't distinctly make out any words, he was sure that one of them must belong to Neji. Well, if nothing else, maybe he could use the shouting as a way to pinpoint his position.

Just as he was about to run into the dark maze separating him from his target, a strange motion from the wraiths circling overhead drew Tokuma's attention. As if suddenly spiked into action by some force Tokuma couldn't perceive, they drew closer to each other as they spun, becoming almost one solid aura as they rose steadily higher into the sky, before without warning, the pack streaked towards the ground, trailing- was that _FIRE_?!

Tokuma watched in unmitigated horror as the conglomerate of dark aura quickly disappeared behind the buildings blocking his path, followed almost immediately by an earsplitting scream and a cry that he now had no trouble understanding: "SASUKE! I'M COMING!"

 _As am I,_ he thought grimly as he pulled his gun from the waistband of his pants and ran towards the opening of the labyrinth of back alleyways. _Don't die on me before I can get there._

* * *

Neji was not trained in the use of weapons.

Neji was so exhausted he was unable to activate his eyes.

Neji was terrified of the wraiths hunting his friend.

Neji was running towards those three wraiths with nothing but a small silver knife in his possession in a martyrous attempt to save Sasuke.

Neji was probably going to die.

The only sound that made it through the fog in Neji's brain caused by Sasuke's piercing screams, shattering the back alley quiet like a sledgehammer through a plate glass window, was the noise of his footsteps echoing off the close walls and his heartbeat, loud in his own ears. He couldn't remember the exact route they'd taken on their way into the maze - he'd been too busy trying to steer them away from the dangers that lay in wait for them to pay attention to the number of turns - but he didn't need to; Sasuke's screams provided a convenient enough marker for his position.

He slowed down as he neared the spot where his ears and other senses told him the fight was going on. All he needed to do was round one more corner, and they would be in sight. His hand around the hilt of the knife tightened until it was shaking uncontrollably, his knuckles whiter than his cheeks were, drained of color and reduced to an ashen hue.

He could do this, Neji tried to assure himself. Together, he and Sasuke faced worse opposition in Konoha together. _With more allies by your side_ , his mind piped up, and this time, he didn't have the energy to either squash it or ignore it.

 _I wish Shikamaru was here_.

The sudden thought surprised Neji. Shikamaru had, after all, been an immense help to them in the first battle against the wraiths, and right now, they needed all the help they could get. But he was also a ghost, and a- well, teaming up with him had his own unique set of problems. Neji gritted his teeth and raised the knife higher in preparation of stepping out into the fray. The idea of a Hyuuga relying on a ghost - no matter the type, no matter how close the two were, no matter how strong - for help was laughable.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Neji jumped around the corner and brandished his weapon in front of his face, half wanting to close his eyes and only just managing to talk himself out of it. He entire body tensed, readying himself for the impact of one of the wraiths to notice him and attack, but as the seconds ticked by and nothing happened, he slowly lowered the knife so he could take in the scene in front of him.

The three wraiths surrounding Sasuke were still cloaked in their shadowy auras, but now that Neji was closer to them, he could make out their faces. Of the three, only two were ones he recognized from their fight back in Konoha, the pyrokinetic Deidara and Tobi, the young boy. The third was an older man, perhaps in his mid-forties, who wore a mask over the lower half of his face as if to cover up some horrific scar. His was the aura with the tiniest hint of silvery-blue, and Neji's eyes narrowed as he looked the ghost up and down. So they had come to New York to bolster their numbers, and had succeeded in doing so. But that begged the question, where were the others Neji and Sasuke had fought in Konoha? The twisted, masochistic freak who loved to stab himself with silver blades and their leader, Pein?

Miraculously, or perhaps because they thought him not worth the effort, none of the wraiths reacted to Neji's presence. Instead, they kept all their focus on Sasuke, swirling around him faster than his eyes could follow as he wildly slashed his knife around in one hand and desperately tried to aim the gun with the other. Neither weapon made the wraiths even falter in their dance as they spun faster, disorienting Sasuke as he valiantly tried to defend himself.

Gritting his teeth, Neji prepared to jump into the fray himself, perhaps by attacking the wraith-tornado from the outside, perhaps by diving into it and standing with his back to Sasuke so they could protect each other more effectively, but right before he was about to spring, he felt a presence seep up from the ground directly behind him. A familiar presence, but not one he was happy to see. How had it snuck up on him? Underground? Through the stained alleyways? Either way, Neji should have noticed far before now.

"Hello again, Hyu-"

Neji spun around on instinct, the knife in his hand flaring wide and slicing directly through the middle of the torso of the ghost behind him. The grin on Pein's face flared wide before dissolving into a grimace of pain along with the rest of him, his semi-solid form wavering like a smoke mirage before it wisped away on the ghost of a breath of wind, leaving Neji off-balance from his swing.

That was not something a ghost could physically accomplish, wraith or otherwise. What the hell…?

All it took was that one moment of off-balance shock, and Neji suddenly felt the presence of the leader of the Akatsuki, the real one this time, again appear from behind him, rushing out of the depths of the ground, far below the edge of his perception. His muscles were still dull from his previous spin, his momentum too much for him to counter in time, and by the time Pein was behind him, Neji was still falling forward. A ghostly breath pushed aside the hair on his neck, and a tiny prick took its place that immediately sent a strange sensation racing through his body.

First, the area immediately surrounding the pinprick began to feel cold, then warm, like his nerves had given up on detecting the temperature of the air around him. The spot of unnatural heat/cold spread from his neck down his back and across his shoulder, bringing first discomfort and soon after, numbness. It traveled down his arm with a speed he couldn't counter, and when it reached his fingers, curled around the hilt of the knife, they loosened of their own accord, unable to follow his orders. The silver blade slipped from his fingers at about the same time the numbness reached his knees and he could no longer support his own weight and dropped to the filthy ground.

Neji pitched sideways, his head cracking on the broken pavement so hard that his vision blacked out for a few seconds. He tried to blink it back, but his eyelids refused to respond, and he was forced to wait until his vision swam lazily back into focus. The sensation of losing his strongest weapon, his sight, was like slamming a knife directly into Neji's gut, and he wanted to scream, to cry out, to make even the smallest noise, but he couldn't; his lungs barely took in any air at all, and what they did manage to accrue, they spit out immediately through his nose with the reverence of a heathenous saint.

"...eji? Neji!"

The hearing that Neji didn't realize he'd lost faded back in at the same time as his vision, the voice Sasuke's, terrified and pleading, but the face in his line of sight Pein's smug smile. He moved to the side, allowing Neji a good look at his captured companion.

The three wraiths surrounding Sasuke had finally succeeded in divesting him of both his weapons while miraculously remaining unscathed. Two of the wraiths, Tobi and the new one, each held one of his arms, preventing him from fighting anymore but not from shouting, while the third, the pyrokinetic Deidara, held him still under threat from a small blaze lit under his chin that grew a tiny bit bigger every time he struggled against his restrainers.

Neji tried to move his lips again, and this time found that he could manage a few sounds. "Sas… uke…"

"What did you do to Neji, you bastard?" Sasuke shouted, struggling even harder against the two who held him back despite the flames that were now licking uncomfortably close to his face and singing the collar of his sweatshirt. "Fix him right now! _Sharin-_!"

All three of the wraiths flew into a flurry of activity wehn Sasuke started to activate his eyes, and before the end of the word had left his mouth, a gag had appeared between his teeth in the shape of a small strip of fabric that the new wraith tied tightly behind his head. Tobi completed the job by shoving more cloth and some cotton balls into his mouth, then slapping a piece of readied duct tape over his lips to seal it all inside. Sasuke's eyes went wide, and Neji could see him struggling to make any kind of articulate sound through the triple-layer gag, but all that came out was harsh whines from deep in his throat.

A hearty laughed echoed through the alley. For a moment, Neji couldn't tell where it came from, then Pein stepped back into his line of sight, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes.

"Did you honestly think that we were so stupid, that trick would work more than once on us?" He gasped like it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard, walking up to Sasuke and tilting his chin up with a single long fingered hand so he could look him directly in the eye. "We planned all this, little Uchiha boy, down to the last second! Did you really think that we'd let you pull out your best weapon now that we've seen it in action once before and knew how to prevent it?"

Sasuke, predictably, said nothing, but his eyes conveyed the many, many things he wished he could say right then.

"Oh, come now, don't be like that!" Pein said with a charismatic smile and a light pat on Sasuke's cheek. "You know we have to even the playing field somehow, now that those eyes of yours let you steal our powers, don't you? Don't worry; we won't give you any chance of using them while you're our guest here in this wonderful city, now that we've proved it can't be activated without your voice. At least, we won't give you a chance to use it unless we want you too."

Whatever Pein had done to Neji to knock him out appeared to be a quick wearing off as it was quick-acting. He was starting to regain the feeling in his extremities, and clenched and unclenched his hand several times to test the bounds of his range of motion. What Pein had said wasn't exactly correct; while it was true that Sasuke, a younger, more inexperienced Uchiha, couldn't yet activate his eyes without the keyword associated with it, many other Uchiha and Hyuuga who had been controlling their powers for longer than him - for example, Neji - could. He didn't see the need to inform them of their ignorance, however, and focused instead on pushing his hand down to try and lever his upper body off the ground. The silver blade he'd dropped earlier had skittered beyond his current reach, but it wasn't too far away. If he could… just… reach it!

His fingers scrabbled over the ground just short of the blade, coming up empty. Pain ripped along Neji's spine and down the arm he was stretching out at the motion, too acute to be anything but unnatural, but he gritted his teeth and kept pushing. Pein and the other wraiths were focused on Sasuke right now, so maybe he could take advantage of their distraction and grab the knife, jump up, attack from the back, and…

Get himself killed. And that was if he could even get to his feet; from the way things were looking right now, Neji wasn't sure if he could even crawl if his life depended on it- which it currently did, and he couldn't even make it six inches across the gravel-littered asphalt.

How long ago had it been since he'd called for backup? Neji suddenly wondered. Long enough that someone should have come by now, surely. Why hadn't anyone come for them? Were they too far away for a quick response? Too deep in the maze for anyone to find them? Had his request even been processed? Or - and this was the more sobering thought - had it simply been ignored?

His train of thoughts had taken him mind away from his present surroundings, so it came as a surprise to Neji when the tips of his fingers brushed against the hilt of the knife. Instantly, his mind snapped back awake, a spike of triumph shooting through him as he stretched a little bit further and grasped the knife.

 _Yes!_

Now that the knife was in his grasp, Neji carefully rolled his weight to the side, trying to balance it on top of his still-weak arms. At first they held, albeit shakily, then his left elbow collapsed, sending him back to the ground. A soft gasp of pain was the only sound that escaped Neji, however, and he cast one more look at the wraiths to reassure himself that they were still ignoring him before he tried again. His elbow throbbed where it had smashed against the cracked pavement, but Neji gritted his teeth and pushed through the pain, raising himself inch by inch until he was almost upright.

 _Success!_ Now all Neji had to do was get himself off the ground, and he could-!

A blinding shot of agony ran up Neji's arm from his wrist, the one that was holding on to the knife. He couldn't help it; he let out a cry, eyes watering from the pain. When he looked up, it was into the face of Pein, who was baring a grin at him that no longer looked human, but monstrous, wild… almost wolfish.

"You'd thought I'd forgotten about you, my little Hyuuga?" He spat, grinding his foot down harder into Neji's wrist and forcing his fingers open around the hilt of the knife with a pained cry. "Don't worry, you'll get yours, and quicker than he will. You see, the Uchiha we need for our little… let's call them _experiments_ , but your powers? They're of completely no interest to us. So that means the only value you have…" Pein grabbed a handful of the hair at the back of Neji's head, forcing his neck to bend backwards at an awkward angle so he could glare directly into his eyes. "Is in making him talk. So tell him, little Hyuuga. Tell him right now to tell us everything he knows about his powers, or he's going to watch me split you wide open, spilling everything you are onto the cold, unfeeling ground, piece by agonizing piece."

He dropped Neji's hair, and he fell to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut. _Was this really it?_ He couldn't help but wonder, a shaking hand coming up to cradle his clavicle as a hacking cough tore out of his throat. _Is this everything we come to? After coming this far?_

After hacking out several more violent coughs, Neji turned back to the wraith who looked down on him, giving him his best _fuck you_ with his eyes. "Never," he snarled. "Never give in, Sasuke! This is bigger than us! We can't let them-!"

Pein cut him off with a vicious backhand. The blow knocked him backwards several feet, but Neji pushed his torso unsteadily off the ground and kept going. "We can't… give them… the knowledge… the power… our families have protected for… for generations, Sasuke! That is what it means to stand on the line between the world of the living and the world of the dead! This is why we have our power! Don't let them-!"

Neji cut off suddenly as the tip of the silver knife was shoved into his mouth. A sharp pain, though not as strong as the one that had rushed through his body earlier, stung the tip of his tongue, and he tasted the strong tang of blood coating the inside of his mouth. Pein's face was vicious as he started to bear down on the blade, sliding it further and further into Neji's mouth, over his tongue without cutting it, until the end of it was even with the line of his back molars.

"I guess I was wrong," Pein sneered, twisting the blade a little so the tip of it nicked his sensitive gums. "Your life does have no purpose for us. The only thing that could possibly make you worthwhile is if you death accomplishes what your words cannot and lossens the Uchiha boy's tongue."

Behind the wraith, Sasuke started screaming underneath his triple-layer gag and struggling even harder against the ghosts restraining him, but Neji couldn't concentrate on him; the only thing he was aware of was the cool metal sliding into his mouth and quickly becoming warm with the heat of his body, and the wraith who was putting it there. Pein's hand was smoking from holding on to the silver blade, but Neji could see it in his face that he didn't even register the pain it must be causing him.

"How should I do it?" Pein mused, half to himself and half to Neji's terrified countenance. "It will be so easy, you know. Humans are such fragile creatures. Even when I was alive, I thought as much. I could go upwards…" here, he flicked the point of the knife up to skim against the roof of Neji's mouth without drawing any blood. "It would go right into your brain if I pressed hard enough, killing you instantly. Or maybe I could push further in…" The point changed direction, flicking down from the roof of Neji's mouth and diving deeper into his mouth until it almost touched the back of his throat, and Neji had to breathe hard through his nose to keep the foreign object from triggering his gag reflex and avoid his throat tightening involuntarily around it. "I could slit your throat from the inside. How about that? Or maybe I should just cut out your tongue and leave you to bleed out like that, unable to say a word. Yes, that sounds rather nice, you not able to say anything, devoid of your meddling words. Maybe I'll do that…"

The knife retreated from the back of Neji's throat, which his watering eyes were grateful for, but it stopped right at the thickest part of his tongue and dug in just the tiniest bit, causing another spurt of blood into his mouth. Neji's eyes grew wide in terror and he tried to grab Pein's wrists to pull the knife away from his mouth, but his hands passed right through the wraith and he was left with no way to defend himself, his body too weak still to even stand on its own, as Pein grabbed his chin and forced his jaw to open further.

"Open wide for me, little Hyuuga…"

Neji closed his eyes; he didn't want to see what was coming. Again, but weaker this time, he tried to haul back on Pein's wrist to pull the blade from his mouth, but his hand passed right through the ghost, and he was forced to drop it back down to his side, no longer strong enough to even hold it aloft. The blade twisted between his lips, sending a bead of blood dripping down his chin and scratching the length of his tongue so it bled steadily into his mouth.

The gunshot that rang into the alley was so surprising, Neji had to wonder if he'd imagined it for a moment. He dragged his unwilling eyes open to see, on the other side of the wraiths, another shadowy figure had joined them, holding a gun. The weapon was shaking, but the figure fired it again, this time aiming directly through the wraiths holding Sasuke to Pein. He snarled and whirled out of the way, and the bullet slammed into the wall behind Neji, though his body was too weak for him to even react to the sound. The blade, which Pein had abandoned inside Neji's mouth in his evasive maneuver, slipped from between Neji's lips and clattered to the ground in front of him.

"Neji! We're here!"

"Should we cut our losses and leave now?" The new wraith hissed, tightening his grip on Sasuke's arm.

"Not a chance, Kakuzu," Pein snarled back. "I won't abandon our plan! There's only one of them-!"

A second bullet, shot from on top of the wall behind Neji, slammed into the ground in the center of the pack of wraiths. "Sorry I'm late, Tokuma," a voice floated down after it. "I had a spot of trouble finding the place. What on earth convinced you that here would be a good place to hide, Neji?"

Tokuma Hyuuga. So even the FIle Operator for New York City himself had answered Neji's cry for help? He let his body sag forward, half from relief, and half from the inability to keep it upright anymore.

Anger visibly splashed across his face, Pein held up his hand and barked a quick order. "Retreat! We have what we came for. We'll deal with the Hyuuga brat later."

As one, the four wraiths plus their burden rushed into the sky, leaving behind nothing but the faint smell of malodorous auras mixed with ozone. Neji felt fear, but it was dulled, far away from him, as if separated by some great chasm. They still had Sasuke, they had taken him… he would have to follow them and get him back… but he couldn't even move… and right now, he was just so grateful that he had been saved that somehow, Sasuke didn't even seem to matter anymore…

"Neji! Are you alright? Can you hear me?"

Strong arms lifted Neji from the ground, and he wanted to sleep in their embrace. It would be alright, wouldn't it? He'd done so some today already… wasn't it someone else's turn to take care of things for him?

Maybe… a nap would be okay. But he had one thing he had to do first didn't he? If he was relinquishing his duty for the time being, he had to make sure his replacement knew everything that was happening so they could do the job to the best of their ability. With much effort, he opened his mouth to speak, surprised when blood poured out instead of words.

 _Right… tongue… bleeding…_ he thought, only semi-conscious. _I hope… I can still… speak…_

"Change… operation code to… red…" he mumbled over red-painted lips, spitty blood trailing down his chin in thick strings and dripping off onto Takuma's clean shirt. "They took… took… Sasuke…"


	27. The Dark Grows Nearer

A strange beeping noise woke Neji, feeling groggier than he ever had before. Had he ignored his self-imposed sleep schedule and short changed his body too many nights in a row? Or had he repeated the one mistake he'd made on his twenty first birthday and gone to bed a little more than tipsy? He couldn't remember, and that beeping really was annoying… could someone just hit the snooze button his alarm…?

"He's awake," a voice somewhere out in the ether said. It echoed painfully through Neji's skull, and he winced. Didn't they know he was trying to sleep?

Wait, why was someone there monitoring whether he was asleep or awake? And why was the beeping noise fluctuating, instead of staying constant like his alarm normally did?

Scrunching up his brow, Neji tried to open his eyes, but was confronted with a sea of blazing white in front of his vision and was forced to close them again. Instinctively, he tried to cover his eyes with his forearm, but that proved impossible when he discovered that it was bound to the arm of whatever chair he was reclining in, and a pinching sensation in the back of his hand when he tried to jerk it free told him that was because he had some kind of shunt or IV that someone - presumably a doctor - didn't want him tearing out. That fact finally placed the beeping noise, though he'd only heard it a few times before: he was hooked up to a computer monitoring his heart rate, meaning he was in some kind of medical care unit.

He tried to make some kind of complaint, but the only that came out was a muffled groan. He'd been focusing on his eyes and his arm before, but now Neji realized that there was something not unlike cotton balls stuffed inside his mouth, and he very much didn't like it. His whole face scrunching up in distaste, he tried to work his tongue to spit them out, but was greeted with a pinch of pain in return and a scolding from the unknown echoey voice.

"Don't try to remove them yet, Neji. Let someone help you."

Neji obeyed the authority in the voice unconsciously, stilling in his reclining chair.

A second voice, this one much softer in both volume and temperament than the first, spoke up close to his elbow as a cool finger encased in a rubber glove touched the back of his hand with the shunt. "Let's check out your eyes first, Neji. Can you open them for me?"

Neji shook his head, not out of disobedience, but physical impossibility. He tried to crack his eyes open, but the too-bright incandescents of whatever medical room he was in dazzled them shut again. His right and dominant hand, as he had discovered earlier, was strapped to the arm of the chair, but his left, he now discovered, had been left loose. He lifted it and drew his fingers into a sign, a little sloppy since it was his non-dominant hand but recognizable.

The doctor said nothing, his silence as much conformation as Neji need to know that he could neither understand sign language, nor was he, by association, a Hyuuga. The authoritative voice that had spoken before, however, reacted to it, proving that he was at least one, if not both, the things the doctor wasn't.

"He says it's too bright. Is there something wrong with your eyes, Neji?"

Neji quickly signed a shaky _no_ with his left hand, followed by the sign for _exhausted_ \- which was a two-handed sign, but he just did the motion with his left and hoped it would get his point across - and the sign for _bright_ again. The authoritarian voice gave a brief hum of understanding before addressing the doctor.

"Is there any way we could dim the lights? Or at least get him something to shield them?"

"I think we have some colored lenses for patients with dilated pupils," the doctor murmured, moving towards the door as he spoke. "I'll be back in a minute. If his condition changes, hit the call button and someone will be in here in less than thirty seconds."

He exited the room, leaving Neji alone with the authoritarian voice. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, unsure about the hostility of the possibly-Hyuuga man, before trying out a shaky question signed with his left hand.

 _Where am I?_

"Hospital," came the prompt answer, and Neji relaxed slightly. At least the unknown maybe-Hyuuga wasn't ignoring him. "You gave Takuma quite a fright when you started spitting up blood right before you passed out. He thought you'd been stabbed."

Neji winced; he hadn't thought what his injuries might look like on the outside. _Sorry_ , he quickly signed. _Cut my tongue._

"We gathered that after a more thorough investigation. Your eyes are uninjured, though? The doctors didn't open them to check."

The likelihood of the man being a Hyuuga just jumped up to almost certain in Neji's mind; no one else would know enough or bother to check on his eyes. He nodded, and the Hyuuga seemed satisfied.

"Good. I trust you'd tell us if that was not the case."

The subtle threat made Neji pause before he nodded again slowly, not as frantic, and more sure this time. The answer seemed to satisfy the man, because he settled back more comfortably in the chair and made no audible sign that he was going to interrogate Neji further.

Neji couldn't help but feel a sense of familiarity about the man, though he couldn't place exactly where he knew him from. With an unsure hand, he quickly signed a shaking, _Who are you?_

The man laughed at his question, though not unkindly. "You'll recognize me as soon as you see me. I'm one of the Elders who sits with your Grandfather during Council sessions. You probably don't recognize my voice because I leave most of the talking to him."

As soon as the man reached the word _Elder_ , Neji tensed, and his heart rate audibly started racing, as documented by the machine he was hooked up to. They had sent an elder to oversee his debriefing? The hand not attached to the IV started shaking, and he curled it into a fist to prevent the elder from noticing. He must really be in trouble; they must have finally found out about the massive deception he and Sasuke had pulled over them.

As if reading his thoughts, the elder chuckled slightly. "Don't worry; you're not in trouble." The word _yet_ was left unsaid, but implied in Neji's mind. "I was just already in the area, so Lord Hyuuga asked me to stop in and check on you when he could not."

Neji would have blinked in surprise if he'd been able to pry his eyes open. His grandfather was worried about him? Since when did the Lord Hyuuga care enough about Neji, his lowly grandson who wasn't even eligible to be a part of the prestigious Main Hyuuga bloodline because his father had the misfortune of being his second-born son instead of Hinata's father, the first, that he would send someone to sit in a hospital room for who knows how long until he woke up?

Before he could ask the question, or even decide if it was an answer he wanted to know, the doctor returned to the room. "Here you are, Neji," he said softly as he slipped something over Neji's face that settled down on the bridge of his nose. "Can you open your eyes now?"

Cautiously, Neji allowed the tiniest sliver along the bottom of his eyelids to crack open. The colored glasses perched on his nose didn't make the room dim, but it did take the edge off the brightness enough for Neji to comfortably blink his eyes several times. The room swam quickly into focus; the doctor's face, Neji discerned, held a comforting expression, while the face of the elder - a very tall, salt-and-pepper haired man in his early sixties whom Neji did recognize now that he could see his face, and was glad that he'd already asked who it was, because if he had simply woken up to the face of a prominent elder, he might have considerably disgraced himself in his surprise - was cold and unreadable. After letting his eyes rove about the room he had awoken in behind the safety of the colored lenses, unhindered by the scrutiny of the other occupants of the room, he nodded to the doctor, who fixed him with a professional, yet caring smile.

"That's excellent, Neji! I know they're helping you for now, but I am going to need to remove them later when I check you over so I can look at your eyes-"

"No," the elder suddenly cut in.

The doctor looked up at him in surprise. "I'm sorry?"

"You can't check his eyes," he clarified with a tone that said there was to be no arguing with him.

The doctor, apparently though, didn't seem to pick up on his tone, and turned to the elder with a troubled frown. "This young man has a lump on his head. I need to check the dilation of his pupils to make sure he doesn't have a concussion, especially considering the trouble he had opening his eyes in this light-"

"You will not check his eyes," the elder repeated, this time standing so his impressive height dwarfed the doctor and cast a shadow across Neji's lap. "I am a member of this man's immediate family, and we suffer from a hereditary condition that makes our eyes much more sensitive to bright lights than a typical person. Therefore, any examinations that are to be performed on his eyes are to be done by a specialist that we provide, to ensure no permanent damage is sustained. Is this clear?"

Neji sat back in slight awe of the elder's forcefulness. He'd never heard this particular elder speak before, but his presence was almost as commanding as Lord Hyuuga's own. On the other hand, though, the lie of the sensitive eyes was one that had been drummed into him since he was a child in case he or another Hyuuga ever was sent to the hospital to protect themselves from a prying doctor getting too curious about their strange pale irises, but he'd never had to use it or even heard of it being used before. He winced slightly; that probably wasn't going to help his case any. If he even survived the first round of whatever debriefing he was going to get once the doctor had confirmed that he could speak and was out of the room.

The doctor's mouth gaped open like a fish trying unsuccessfully to suck up air instead of water for a few moments. Then it snapped shut, and he gave a hostile glare to the elder.

"We have an eye specialist on staff as this hospital, you know."

The elder gave his a baleful smile. "But he's not _our_ specialist. It is a _very_ rare condition, after all. And we already have an appointment set up for this afternoon."

That, at least, seemed to convince the doctor, if not satisfy him. "Fine," he said on a long sigh before turning back to Neji, his professional smile struggling back into place on his mouth. "Let's get those bandages out of your mouth so you can talk and tell us your own opinion then, shall we, Neji?"

 _Good luck if you thought you were going to get a different answer out of me,_ Neji thought as the doctor carefully cracked his sore jaw open and began to pull the foul-tasting gauze and cotton balls out of his mouth. The doctor started chatting as he worked, presumably to make Neji feel less nervous, though Neji found his words irritating rather than soothing.

"You were lucky most of these cuts were shallow; we were able to slow the bleeding quickly, and none of them requires stitches. Most of them should be on their way to healing now, but you shouldn't worry if one or two of them starts to bleed a little bit again in the next day or so. That's normal, so just put some pressure on it with a clean finger or a piece of gauze and it should stop again…"

Neji tuned the doctor out. He was sure the information was useful, but right now he just couldn't deal with it. The taste of stagnant saliva mixed with bloody gauze in his mouth was making his stomach churn, and he had to concentrate his entire mental faculties on not vomiting the gauze out into the doctor's lap. When at last his mouth was free of the disgusting layers of cotton, the doctor gave him a small glass of water that he rinsed with and spat back into the cup - the amount of blood that came out was both surprising and disgusting - then another glass which he could drink. He greedily gulped the water down, immediately wishing he had savored it when no more proved forthcoming, then passed the glass back to the doctor with a slight grimace.

After taking the glass, the doctor stared at Neji expectantly, causing a frown to grace his lips. Had he been asked a question that he hadn't heard? After clearing his throat slightly - and grimacing at the dull ache in the region of his tonsils; his voice box just couldn't get a break on these missions, cold it? - he coughed out, "S-sorry?"

"I'd like for you to decide for yourself if you'd allow me to check you for a concussion," the doctor said what was clearly a repetition of something he'd already asked. "It would be very simple, just a quick light in both of your eyes to check the dilation of your pupils-"

"No," Neji cut him off just as the elder had earlier, struggling unto a more upright position on the relaxed chair. "I'll be leaving the hospital as soon as you'll discharge me. The specialist will conduct a more thorough check when I see him," he added just in time for it to not seem like an afterthought as he remembered the lie the elder had already told the doctor.

"Hm…" The doctor pursed his lips; it was clear that he still wasn't pleased nor satisfied. "Are you absolutely certain? I and the rest of the staff here are certainly qualified to assist you with your… sensitivities… if you'll just allow us. Also, it might be better to keep you here overnight, to keep a better eye on you."

"I said no," Neji repeated angrily, and the doctor drew back slightly. "I refuse the examination, and I will be leaving this hospital within the hour. Against medical advice, if I must."

The doctor's eyes grew wide at the phrase, then they narrowed abruptly and he stood without preamble.

"Very well," he said in an entirely different tone than the professionally calm one he'd used when Neji had first woken. "I'll get your paperwork started. Someone else will be in to remove your IV shortly."

He swept from the room before either of them could respond. Neji scoffed quietly and stared down at the IV shunt in the back of his hand. He didn't know exactly what it was putting into his body and didn't like that. Hopefully whoever the doctor was sending to take it out would arrive soon.

"If you would like, we do have someone stationed in New York City with medical experience in dealing with our family," the elder said quietly as soon as the doctor was completely out of earshot. "A second cousin of your partner Sasuke, actually."

 _Sasuke_.

Neji had almost forgotten about his kidnapped partner in his befuddled state of waking, but now the memories flew back to him, as vivid and violent as the moment he had experienced them. Sasuke's terrified face, his muffled cries behind the triple layer gag, the sharp point of a knife sliding into his own throat and the feeling of helplessness. He started to shake, the scene in front of her starting to blend into a back alley filled with filth and a malevolent dark aura.

The elder leaned forward, his brows coming together in concern. "Neji, are you quite alright? Are you sure you don't want to stay a little longer?"

"No," Neji gasped, pulling himself back to the present like a drowning man breaking the surface of a dark lake. "I- I can't stay here. Sasuke's in trouble. The code red- was it implemented? Are they searching for him?"

"Ah." The elder leaned back, and the look on his face froze the blood in Neji's veins as he continued. "No, this situation is still classified as a code orange. As you passed out immediately after issuing the code red, the Council of Elders wanted to verify it once you woke before going to Red level. After all, you and Sasuke were simply separated during your search, and it's likely that we just haven't found him yet."

"But- but we don't have time!" Neji gasped, struggling to throw his legs over the side of his reclining chair, only to realize that he was dressed in nothing but a hospital gown and the chair had rails to prevent him from getting out. "Didn't Takuma tell you what I said? Didn't he see it? Sasuke isn't lost- the wraiths _took_ him! They want him for-!"

He cut off abruptly as a nurse popped her heard around the door, a concerned look on her face. "Is everything alright, Mr. Hyuuga? I heard shouting."

"We're fine," both Neji and the elder said at once, neither of their gazes leaving the other to spare the nurse a single glance. She blinked briefly in surprise, obviously not having thought that the title of "Mr. Hyuuga" could apply to both of them.

"Oh… alright, then… well, I'm here to take your IV out, Mr…., erm, Neji, is it?"

Neji gave a single jerky nod in response to the nurse's question, then kept his mouth clamped shut as she moved forward and took the needle out of the back of his hand. It stung a little coming out and bleed a tiny drop of blood onto his skin, but the nurse quickly covered it up with a bandage and a cheery smile.

"There! All better, are we?"

Unsurprisingly, Neji couldn't find it within himself to return her smile. She faltered in the face of his downturned mouth and hidden eyes, then backed towards the door uncertainty.

"I'll just go… tell the doctor… that you're all set to be released, then…"

Turning on her heel, she fled the room as if Neji's glare was chasing after her like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

"We don't have any time to waste in a full report!" Neji growled as soon as her footsteps receded down the hallway. "They have Sasuke _now_!"

The elder's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Nonetheless, you will give one. I don't think you understand the gravity of your current situation, Neji. You may be one of our favored File Operators, but the Council has begun to suspect some of your recent activities. You're lucky you're just being asked to give a full report and not being interrogated."

Neji, wisely, chose not to argue with that. Being suspected of anything by the Council of Elders could be as good as a death sentence. Instead, he just nodded. "I understand. How…?"

"Conference call," the elder explained before Neji could even formulate his question. "I'm the only one in New York; the rest are still in Seattle. Tokuma has a connection back at his office."

Neji nodded again and glanced down at himself. "And where might I get some clothes…?"

The elder pointed to a small bag by his feet that Neji hadn't noticed before. He nodded again to show his understanding, then bit his lip.

"But this can be done… quickly, can't it?"

For the first time, the elder's sharp stone facade cracked, and Neji saw the pity that hid underneath it. Neji bristled when he saw it - he was a Hyuuga, dammit; he didn't anyone's pity! - but the emotion was gone again almost as soon as he'd caught a glimpse of it, the cold mask once again descending over the elder's emotionless face.

"As quickly as these things ever are."

* * *

Darkness.

Cold.

Intermittent heat, so strong that Sasuke found himself wishing for the return of the cold.

Where was his mouth? He couldn't speak.

Where were his ears? He couldn't hear.

Where were his eyes? He couldn't see.

If he could somehow equate this sensation of existing in abject nothingness in the auras of the wraiths, of darkness and cold with licks of heat that he knew must be coming from the pyrokinetic wraith, to something, it would be swimming deeply underwater to the depth where light could no longer penetrate the surface. Something like air, but not air, thicker than air, flowed in and out of his lungs, each breath supplying his body with life-giving oxygen but also tainting him with something intangible. Perhaps it was blackness, or perhaps it was nothing, because if he lost control of his sight, how could he distinguish a strain of black from the darkness around it?

Where were his eyes? He couldn't see.

* * *

Neji found his leg jumping uncontrollably as he waited for the conference call on the large screen in front of him to connect. He was seated in Tokuma's office between the man himself, who looked extremely nervous in the face of a video call with the Hyuuga Council of Elders, and the elder who had met him in the hospital. On the screen, a number was dialing, slowly connecting them across the country. Perhaps the signal on one end or the other was bad, Neji surmised, as the seconds they were waiting silently stretched on into minutes, though it was unlikely. Nothing so inefficient would ever be allowed into the framework of Hyuuga intercommunications. It was more likely that the elders were sitting and staring at the call just like them, forcing them to wait before they picked up. It was a power play Neji had experienced many times before.

With a pop, the call went through, and six faces appeared on the screen. Neji had to say that he was surprised; he'd thought that he would face the entire council, but apparently they'd chosen to have a more private report- or interrogation, as it was likely to be. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. On one hand, he had been spared the humiliation of another scolding in front of the entire council. On the other hand, the faces that confronted him were the six most influential Elders on the council; they could easily make a decision that could shatter him and hide it from the rest of the council.

"Well, Neji," his grandfather stated, steepling his hands and fixing Neji with a piercing glare. "I assume you know why you're here. Please, explain yourself."

Neji's throat went dry. He had been expecting his grandfather, of course; as the leader of the Council of Elders, he couldn't miss something like this. Still, expecting those cold, pale eyes and actually seeing them now, settled on him like a pair of lasers intent on destroying his soul, were two completely different things.

"Yes, Lord Hyuuga," he managed to croak when his throat recovered. "I… um… well… how much do you… do you know already?"

"Assume we know nothing."

The order came from a man near the left side of the screen, and Neji swallowed with difficulty, sure that the perceptive eyes on the other side of the country could see his rising nervousness even while not in the same room. _Assume we know nothing_. Then they must know something already, but wanted to hear it from his own mouth. _Or perhaps,_ his mind supplied, _they want to catch you in a lie._

If that was their aim, they were very likely to succeed. The web of lies Neji and Sasuke had spun to cover up their actions in Konoha was only a single layer thick, and could easily crumble away into nothingness if the right strand was pulled. _Assume we know nothing…_ Neji took a deep breath and started as calmly as he could where he knew there would be the least amount of discrepancy: the very end.

"Sasuke and I were tracking what we assumed to be the wraiths we found traces of in Konoha, the group called the Akatsuki, when we stumbled upon a trab they had set for us. They herded us into an area of high sedentary aura so it was difficult for me to utilize my eyes, and when Sasuke tried to turn and fight, they captured him. They intended to kill me, but Tokuma arrived on the scene just in time to stop them, though after I had been given a dose of some paralyzing drug by the leader of the Akatsuki; I suspect he was a poisoner in life, and his way of killing after death also revolves around that. Tokuma and his crew retrieved me, though they were too late for Sasuke, who is now in the hands of the wraiths."

"And you know this for certain?"

The sudden question surprised Neji, who frowned. "Pardon?"

"You know for certain that these… _Akatsuki_ took Sasuke?" The elder repeated, leaning forward slightly. "You yourself just admitted to being drugged during the time you claim him to have been taken; could you not have just… hallucinated the fact that he had been taken? It is conceivable that he is still out in the city, is it not? There are currently search parties scouring the city for-"

"No!" Neji growled, hitting the table in front of him. He didn't care when Tokuma gasped next to him, or when the elders all fixed him with scandalized expressions- all except his grandfather, that is, who kept his face as expressionless as the moment he had greeted him. Sasuke was in trouble, God damn it! Why couldn't they understand that they didn't have time for any of this? "He was taken! They grabbed him and took off into the sky! Takuma was standing right there when it happened- he should have been able to tell you!"

Tokuma stiffened next to Neji as the attention of the elders shifted to him.

"Is this true?" One demanded.

Shifting awkwardly in his seat, Tokuma stuttered, "Well, you see… I was more focused on Neji… so I didn't quite see… but it's possible… that they could have taken him…"

 _Didn't quite see?!_ The look Neji cast Tokuma had him flinching away. There was no way Tokuma hadn't seen the way the wraiths had pulled Sasuke along with them! What was he lying for?

"In any case," another one of the elders added, "why would the wraiths want Sasuke alive? If you two resisted, why didn't they just kill him and be done with it?"

"Because they wanted his… powers…" Neji shouted, then trailed off when he saw the gleams in the eyes of the council. They all said, _gotcha._

"And whatever makes you suspect that?" A female elder with hair almost as pale as her eyes asked, not even trying to hide her sadistically pleased grin.

"Because…" The longer Neji floundered for words, the less credible it would make then, so he blurted out the first reasonable excuse that popped into his head. "Because they gagged him as soon as he tried to activate his Sharingan! They couldn't have known about that if they didn't intend to take him for his powers!"

"But how could they have known he was an Uchiha and would have those powers?"

"Because… because… he was about to activate the Sharingan, obviously!"

"And so they set this trap for you and Sasuke without knowing who either of you were, and just happened to catch an Uchiha?"

"We… we were tracking them… so they must have… must have suspected…"

"Neji."

The single word had the entire council and Neji freezing in their seats. Coming through a speaker did nothing to detract from the power in the Lord Hyuuga's voice, especially when he flattened his hands against the table in front of him and fixed Neji with a cold look that had him rooted to the spot, unable to look away.

"You've been lying to us all along, Neji. Haven't you."

Though it was phrased as a question, it clearly wasn't one, and the back of Neji's throat physically ached from dryness. Unable to tell a blatant lie in the face of such overwhelming authority, Neji cracked open lips as dry as an arid desert and whispered, "Yes, Lord Hyuuga."

"About what happened in Konoha."

"Yes, Lord Hyuuga."

"You met these same wraiths there, didn't you."

"...Yes, Lord Hyuuga."

The entire table of elders shifted in their seats at Neji's unwilling admission, but neither Neji nor his grandfather even blinked.

When Neji's grandfather lowered his hands slowly into his lap, Neji knew that the kid gloves had come off.

"What you have just admitted to is a blatant disregard for our laws and regulations, Neji. You have exactly five minutes to explain your actions to us in a satisfactory manner, or we will be forced to met out the proper punishment according to our laws- regardless," he added with narrowed eyes, "of any personal feelings I may have in this matter. Do you understand?"

Neji bowed his head; what else could he do? "Yes, Lord Hyuuga," he whispered, the words barely audible even to himself.

"Then start explaining. And it better be good."


	28. Punishment

"I can't believe no one else has figured out yet that they gave us rooms that conjoin through the closet."

Kisame rubbed Itachi's bare shoulder comfortingly and pressed a kiss to his temple. "It's a relic of the days when the Boss used to use this room and his most trusted bodyguard slept in the one you sleep in. They needed to be close in case the bodyguard had to come to his rescue. To tell you the truth, I forgot it was there too until you walked out through my closet the other day."

"Hm." Itachi hummed contentedly and snuggled a little more securely into Kisame's solid chest. "So it's a little like what it used to be like before? You know, what with me being dubbed your official 'blind guard dog' or whatever."

"Are you still upset about that?"

"Hmmm… haven't decided yet." Itachi pulled back to grace Kisame with the hint of a smile. "But I bet you could persuade me to like it."

"Is that so?" The hint of a laugh in Kisame's voice made Itachi grin and flop back down on his chest. "Oof! Hey, don't do that!"

"Like you can't take it," Itachi scoffed, pointedly tracing his fingertips over the solid muscle that made up Kisame's bicep.

"I shouldn't be expected to take it! You've gained weight since we got here!"

"Only because you've been feeding me real food instead of that healthy pseudo-food crap."

"'Real food'? What, like French fries?"

"Exactly."

Their mock seriousness only lasted for a few more seconds before they both dissolved into quiet chuckles. Itachi leaned his head down and let his temple rest on Kisame's chest, right above his heart so he could hear its steady tempo. Another layer of tension drained from his body at the sound, and he sighed in mixed contentedness and stress.

Kisame shifted slightly so he could cuddle him more effectively against his chest. "Are you sure you're doing okay here, Itachi?"

"What would give you the idea that I wasn't?"

"You're being clingier than usual."

"What, I'm not allowed to snuggle with my favorite muscly gangster?" Itachi poked Kisame's chest in mock derision. "You wound me, Boss."

Kisame growled low in his chest, the rumble vibrating up through his skin and into Itachi's body, as he always did when Itachi called him by his title. "I'm trying to be serious here, Itachi. I know you're having a hard time fitting in here, and running into your brother the other day didn't help anything."

Itachi was quiet for a moment before he answered Kisame's non-question. "They're starting to… well, perhaps not respect me, but tolerate me, at least. I've stopped receiving death glares whenever I enter rooms, at least."

"How could you know if someone's giving you a death glare?"

"Please, Kisame, how can you give me so little credit after knowing how much I can accomplish? When two or more people are talking animatedly and they stop as soon as you enter the room, what else could they be doing but glaring at you?"

"That's good, at least." Kisame shifted his hand to rub absentmindedly at Itachi's upper ar. "But you didn't say anything about your brother. I know you were upset over seeing him; I heard you through the wall that night. If there's something you need to talk about, you know you can talk to me."

"I know, Kisame." Itachi turned his face towards Kisame's chest so his next words were muffled by the larger man's skin. "You heard me?"

"I did."

Itachi let out a groan and pushed himself free of Kisame's embrace. "That's humiliating. And here I thought I'd be able to make it through the week without having another meltdown in front of someone else."

"It's just me, Itachi."

"Yeah, you and every other person who walked down the hallway. God, this _sucks_! Why can't I control myself?"

Kisame's fingers wound gently through Itachi's, tugging him back down to lay against his solid chest. "Because you try too hard, Itachi. You don't have to be strong all the time. That's what I'm here for."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I just… I want to have some kind of autonomy, you know? It already feels like I rely on you too much."

"I see…" In the pause in between the soft interjection and his next words, Kisame's chest tensed underneath Itachi, as if these sentences were ones he'd long thought over in his mind, rewording them again and again until they were perfect. "In that case… how would you feel about doing something more around here? So you didn't have to feel like so much of a freeloader?"

A frown graced Itachi's lips. He lowered his head back to Kisame's chest so he could better feel the bigger man's pulse as he spoke. "What do you mean? Like, with the gang?"

The fingers on Itachi's arm tightened almost imperceptibly. "Would you want to?"

"Well…! I…!" Itachi floundered for a moment before he found the right words. "Of course I would! I just didn't think I'd be of any use to anyone!"

"I can find ways to make you useful," Kisame promised. "I've actually been thinking about it for a while now. But the question would be if you would be okay with it. Everything you'd be doing would be definitely illegal and probably immoral. Can you handle that?"

"I like how you ask that after I've already joined your gang."

"That's different. Right now, you're more like… an honorary member. My personal advisor. If you joined for real, you'd be out there doing the exact same things the rest of my men are. Drug running, interrogation, blackmail… even murder." Kisame took a deep breath. "This isn't some kind of fantasy life, Itachi. People get hurt. _You_ could get hurt. I don't… I don't want to push you into that if you don't want it."

Itachi pulled away from Kisame's chest and angled his face, not so he could see his friend's face, but so Kisame could see his. "When you first trusted me enough to tell me your past back at the hospital, one of the first things you told me was that you were a murderer. If I didn't shy away from it then, what makes you think I would now?"

There was a moment of silence in which Itachi wished that he could see Kisame's face, then Kisame chucked and pulled him back down to rest on his chest. "I don't know why I ever doubted that's what you would say."

"Please; as if I'd ever give up my dream of being a video game final boss."

"You know, when you say things like that, it doesn't exactly give me the confidence that you're giving this the proper amount of thought."

"Can you blame me? Since I've experienced so much trauma in my short life that I've resorted to cheap jokes to take the edge off my insanity?"

"...That's not healthy, Itachi."

"Beggars can't be choosers, Kisame. I deal with my shattered mind the best way I've found and take whatever side effects come with it."

"Mm."

Kisame didn't reply in words, just held Itachi closer as if the heat from his body could accomplish what time could not and meld the shattered pieces of his mind back into a single cohesive whole. Itachi didn't mind; he knew it wouldn't work, but the placebo effect was calming enough.

When the clock down the hall, barely audible to Itachi's ears through the closed door to Kisame's room, chimed midnight, he sighed and raised his weight onto his elbows. "Should I leave?"

Kisame shifted blearily under Itachi, and he could tell that he'd just woken him up from being almost asleep. "Mm? Do you want to go back to your room?"

After a few moments of deliberating silence, Itachi admitted, "Not really. Sometimes… the nightmares are better when I'm with you. I think tonight's going to be a rough one. Do you mind? I might wake you up."

"You've already done that once," Kisame breathed on a sleepy groan, rolling over and pulling Itachi's back against his bare chest. "Just go to sleep, Itachi."

The warmth that radiated out from the form behind him made that impossible for a while, but finally the ghostly breaths brushing against the back of his neck lulled him to an uneasy slumber that soon transformed into an easy one, memories of clinical whiteness and bright lights fading into a warm darkness.

* * *

By the time he had finished speaking, Neji was extremely glad that only Takuma and the elder who had come for him in the hospital were in the room with him. Based on the varying levels of mixed shock, horror, and outrage on the six faces on the screen, he was sure at least one of them would have strangled him before he could finish. As it was, Takuma himself was staring at him slack-jawed, uncaring of their audience, and the elder beside him looked like he was having a very difficult time keeping himself still. The only one whose face showed no sign of his inner turmoil was Neji's grandfather, and that was only because he had rested his forehead on his hand a few scant sentences into Neji's explanation, hiding his expression from view.

Neji bowed his head and waited for someone else to break the silence now that he had spoken of everything that had happened, from the first day he had arrived in Konoha to Sasuke's kidnapping a few scant hours before. The one thing he'd left a secret, however, was Shikamaru's reappearance in his life in both Seattle and New York City and the extent to which their relationship had progressed while they'd both been in Konoha, and not for himself but for the protection of the phantom. If the elders found out about exactly what they'd done, Shikamaru would be hunted down so quickly amd so efficiently, not even the ability to teleport away would save him.

As it was, Neji wished he had the ability to teleport away from this awkward situation, though he suspected doing that would only make things worse. One by one, the elders on the opposite side of the screen recovered from the fits he had given them, several of them looking like they were lucky to have escaped cardiac arrest. Finally, his grandfather looked up at him, and Neji felt something drop out of the bottom of his stomach at the gaze, which looked truly upset for the first time Neji had ever seen it.

"You're one of our best, Neji," he said with a slight hitch in his voice. "You know the rules we keep better than some of the people who enforce them. And you have broken almost every single one we have."

Neji let out a single, shaky breath. "Yes, Grand- Lord Hyuuga."

If his grandfather noticed the slip, he made no remark on it. "And moreover," he continued, "You lied to us about it, and continued to lie afterwards. You omitted facts and broke our laws - laws designed to keep our people _safe_ \- and because of it, one of our Sister Clan's sons has been taken. These are not mistakes- these are tratorious acts, the like of which we have lost members of our family to before."

Neji knew better than to ask what "losing" a ember of the family entailed. He'd heard stories - everyone had - of people disappearing, friends, close family, and loved ones alike, but no one ever knew if they had been banished, killed, or simply disappeared. He said nothing, but simply nodded in compliance.

The Elder sighed and dropped his hands into his lap. "There is no way around it this time; you _must_ be punished for what you have done. We will take a break from this call to discuss before we announce what your shall punishment, Neji."

"Are you sure-" One of the other elders started, and Neji's grandfather cut him off with a nod.

"And yes, I will be abstaining from both the discussion and the vote due our personal ties. This meeting is temporarily adjourned."

The screen went blank. The sudden darkness threw Neji's eyes, still recovering from their exhaustion, into a brief fit of darkness, but they soon recovered. He still had to blink, though, at his grandfather's final words before the video had ended. He was abstaining from both the discussion and voting? Because of the personal ties between himself and Neji? Why? His grandfather had certainly never shown any hint of treating him differently from any other Hyuuga- why now, then? Had Neji finally crossed the line he'd been toeing against for years?

He swallowed through the nervous lump in his throat. Neither Takuma nor the elder who had brought him to the office seemed inclined to talk to him after everything he'd just revealed, so Neji chose to remain silent as well, bowing his head toward his lap and closing his eyes. The only sound that echoed in the office was the clear and consistent ticking of the second hand of the clock hanging on the wall. After a few minutes of listening solely to it, Neji found that his heartbeat was keeping in time with the clock, each tick like a knell he wasn't sure represented life or death. Squeezing his hands tightly in his lap, he fought to ignore the ticking clock, but the more he tried to focus on anything but the sound, the more the sound invaded deep into his brain, beating through every layer of his mental defense until it grasped him in its solid hands and kept him enslaved to its steady beat.

He wasn't sure how long he sat still, hearing and knowing nothing but the steady _tick… tick… tick…_ of the clock's second hand, unable to count passing minutes because of his fixation on passing seconds, before the screen blinked to life again.

It was the slight pop the computer made as it started to reconnect, the first sound he'd heard since the screen has flickered off besides his own breathing and that damnable clock, that first drew his attention. His eyes instantly flicking back open, Neji stared at the screen as it showed a loading bar that slowly crawled to completion before vanishing to allow the video stream of the Council to take its place.

All six of them were still there, even Neji's grandfather, though his face looked considerably more troubled than before. Neji felt the two men on either side of him sit up a little straighter, but he didn't follow suit; he was already sitting at maximum ramrod capacity, and had been since the beginning of the call.

Lord Hyuuga took a deep breath and steepled his hands. "The council has come to a decision about your punishment, Neji," he said, his gaze flicking away from his quarry for a moment to gauge the expressions on the faces surrounding him, all of which were blank and gave nothing away. "The sins you have committed are many and carry considerable heft. However, we must also take into account the years of service you have given us and the fact that, while misguided, we believe that your actions were not done out of malicious contempt of our rules, but born of a desire to protect, both your partner and the other residents of the town. Is this correct?"

Neji blinked in surprise; he hadn't said any of that out loud, and surely hadn't expected the elders to pick up on it, but that was what had been going through his mind at the time. Though, the particular "residents" of the town that he had strove to protect were not ones the Council was likely to be pleased by. "Y-yes, that is true."

A layer of unease peeled off Neji's grandfather's face, showing Neji just how upset he had been by the idea of him flaunting the rules. With a slightly more controlled expression, he continued, "After taking that into account, we believe that you made the decisions you thought were best at the time. If you had successfully made it through this situation doing that, this would not be an issue, but since your judgement failed you, we have been placed in a precarious position. Therefore, we have decided not to give you a standard punishment, but one tailored to your exact situation."

Neji's breath caught in his throat. He didn't know what he could say to that, or even if his voice would work enough to get a full word, let along a sentence, out, so he just nodded.

"You chose to work through a situation on your own that our rules clearly state requires seven times the manpower that you had, and you lost a member of your team because of that. Your punishment is this: since you were so eager to ignore assistance earlier, you will finish this task by yourself. You must rescue your Uchiha partner and end all the wraiths without any help from another Hyuuga or Uchiha; essentially, by yourself or with any other assets you can line up yourself. The first priority is Sasuke's retrieval, followed by the extermination of the wraiths. If, at any point in time, you feel you cannot complete either of those objectives, you may call for another fully equipped and staffed squad to take your place, but this will signal to us that you are no longer worthy to be part of our system, and we will lose you. Do you understand?"

Neji had to fight to keep his jaw from dropping. Oh, he understood alright, far too well. This was the cruelest punishment he'd ever heard of being given out. They were making him pay for his failures by forcing him to repeat the things he'd already failed at, knowing that he wouldn't be able to succeed and placing an insane condition on top of it. This wasn't a punishment; it was the beginning of an excommunication.

Still, he had no choice. There was a reason he hadn't run away from the Hyuuga before (and not because he couldn't, though it was unlikely for him to succeed even if he tried), and that reason was waiting back in Seattle for him to come home to her again. He wasn't about to lose this battle.

Neji stared directly back at his grandfather through the screen, proud that he found his voice without it shaking. "I understand."

He blinked at Neji's forward reaction, as did several of the other elders sitting behind the table, and Neji couldn't help the small stirring of pride in his gut that he had managed to surprise them. A concerned frown took over the Elder's face, and he waved a hand in a dismissive fashion.

"Our sentence has been spoken. This meeting is adjourned."

The screen went blank a second time without any other warning, but this time it powered completely off, leaving no trace of the call's presence except a black monitor. Takuma stood abruptly, and Neji noticed his hands were shaking.

"You should… probably… probably…" he said uncertainty through the hazy discomfort that clouded his face. "Wouldn't want them thinking… I helped… if you stayed to long…"

"Yes." Neji stood and faced the elder who had brought him there. He refused to meet Neji's eyes, and Neji suddenly realized that he'd never gotten his name. "Thank you for… everything so far… but I really should be going."

Neither of them answered this time, nor even looked at him, so Neji sucked in a breath and walked out the door of the office. He felt different as he descended the stairs to exit the building, as if everyone could tell the new stiffness in his joints and fear that caused his eyes to dart around him more often than usual, but his stride remained constant despite the emotions that hadn't quite hit him yet. When he reached the street, he was surprised to find that it was dark.

 _Of course it would be_ , he chided himself as he started walking. _It was dark when you went it._ Checking his phone, he discovered that is was past two o'clock in the morning.

Everything suddenly hit him about two blocks away from the building he had left. His breath came suddenly fast, his knees bucked, and his legs could no longer support his weight. Being the dead of night, there weren't many people around, but there were enough that they gave him strange looks as they passed his semi-collapsed form on the sidewalk, hanging off a wrought iron fence. Each beat of his heart felt like a punch to his chest sending poisoned blood circulating through his body and stealing away his ration thought.

No. No! He couldn't let this beat him! With insurmountable effort, Neji managed to drag himself up. He had to do something. He had to think of something. He could fix this; he just needed to figure out _how._

Unconsciously, he slipped his phone out of his pocket and was halfway through dialing a number that was branded into his mind before he remembered the reason he hadn't programmed it into his phone in the first place. With a curse, he spun around, looking for a pay phone. Unfortunately, they were hard to find these days, and he had to run several blocks before he found one tucked in the corner of an intersection.

Neji slipped several quarters into the machine and pressed the keys to call the number, hoping against hope that they would pick up this late at night.

* * *

Itachi wrinkled his nose when he heard the sound of Kisame's cell phone going off, waking him from his - finally - steady sleep. Kisame shifted at the sound, turning over to block his ears and accidentally pushing Itachi to the side at the same time, crushing him underneath his massive form. Wincing, Itachi beat weakly against his chest with an open fist.

"Get the hell off me, Kisame. And answer your phone."

"I don' wanna…" Kisame half groaned, half sighed. "'M too tired… you get it."

"I can't get it, Kisame; that's your official phone. You know, the one you get official calls on. What if it's someone important? They won't be very pleased if I pick up."

"Just five more minutes…"

" _No_ , not five more minutes, Kisame, answer your God damn phone _now_."

Itachi managed to wriggle himself out from underneath Kisame and felt around on the nightstand until his fingertips came in contact with the wringing phone, which he promptly dropped on Kisame's face.

"I said _phone_ , Kisame!"

With a final groan of weak-willed acceptance, Kisame cleared his throat, then grabbed the phone, swearing a little when the bright light hit his eyes. Within a few seconds, however, the groan in his voice changed to a frown.

"Huh. That's funny. I don't recognize the number."

"Could it be someone from the gang trying to contact you? You know, someone out in the field, maybe?"

"No, all their numbers should be programmed in." The frown in Kisame's voice deepened. "It looks like a pay phone number."

"How can you tell?"

"The area code."

"Does this mean someone's in trouble?"

"We'll just have to see," Kisame answered grimly as he hit the answer button on the phone and raised it to the side of his face. Despite the uncertainty of the situation, Itachi couldn't help but feel a warm swoop in his gut when he realized Kisame had said "we'll" instead of "I'll". He really was a equal in this.

"Kisame speaking," he snapped into the receiver without any preamble, perhaps a little too waspishly for Itachi's taste, but he probably thought it was warranted, considering the hour. "Who the hell are you, and why are you calling me in the middle of the fucking night?"

A voice floated through the phone, garbled enough from a weak signal and the distance Itachi was sitting at that he couldn't understand what he was saying word for word, though he could hear the distinct notes of panic in his voice and caught the tale end of a sob at the end of his sentence.

"I'm sorry," Kisame suddenly snarled viciously, causing Itachi's heart to skip a beat in surprise, "But I think you have the wrong number. No one by that name answers this phone. I'm hanging up now."

" _Wait!"_ The voice was frantic now, the shout coming across loud enough for Itachi to make it out before something else - tears? - obscured the man's garbled words and he could no longer pick them out amidst the static and shattered breathing.

"What do you want with him?" Kisame snarled again after listening to the man speak, though Itachi was sure the last thing he wanted to do was keep up the conversation.

The man stuttered to a stop, then started again, a little less frantically. From the irritation nearly boiling off Kisame's skin, however, Itachi knew it wasn't good enough, however.

"Look, if you can't tell me, you don't need to speak with him."

 _With him? Who?_ Itachi frowned, then let out a small gasp of surprise when he clearly heard his own name floating from the phone.

" _Please… Itachi… only one… help…_ "

"Is he asking for me?" Itachi asked, gripping the wrist Kisame was using to hold the phone to his face.

Kisame brushed his hand away with his other hand, though he gave it a gentle squeeze before letting go so it wouldn't feel like he was being ignored. "I told you," he repeated into the receiver, "If you can't tell me what you want with him, you don't get to speak to him. If that's all, I' hanging up and I would ask you to please destroy any records you have of this number."

There was a beat of silence on the other end of the phone, followed by a single sentence Itachi wished that he didn't hear correctly, if only to stop the sudden blade of frost twisting in his gut.

" _It's his brother."_

"Give it to me!" Itachi didn't think about his actions; he just moved, swiping the phone from Kisame's hand and bringing it to his face. "Hello?" He gasped into the receiver, breathless from the knife that had taken away three-quarters of his lung capacity. "This is Itachi. Who are you and what do you know about my brother?"

" _Itachi…_ " The voice on the other end of the phone sniffed, as if trying to hold back a frantic sob. " _I'm sorry… I tried to… It's my fault…_ "

Now it was directly in his ear, Itachi recognized the voice; it was the young Hyuuga man who had been with Sasuke the other day. The icy blade in his chest twisted a little deeper.

"You're the Hyuuga boy, right? What happened to Sasuke? Please, tell me what happened to my brother!"

" _I'm so sorry,_ " the Hyuuga boy whispered into the phone. " _I wasn't good enough. They took him, Itachi, and now I have to get him back and I don't know how._ "

"Who?" Itachi demanded, though he had a sinking suspicion he already knew. "Who took y brother?"

There was a sharp gasp on the other end of the phone, like he was trying to take a steadying breath and only succeeded in knifing air into his lungs. " _The wraiths. The wraiths took him. I'm so sorry, Itachi, and I don't know what to do and…_ "

Itachi didn't hear much beyond that. The phone slipped from his grasp and fell to the bed, but Itachi barely registered the dull thud of it against the mattress.

Sasuke was gone. His brother was gone. He'd been taken by the things that Itachi hated most, and there was nothing he could have done to prevent it.

No. That wasn't quite true. There were a thousand things Itachi could have done to prevent this from happening, but he hadn't known at the time and now it was too late. He vaguely recognized Kisame's voice again, surmising subconsciously that the other man had picked up the phone from where Itachi had dropped it and was now giving the Hyuuga boy directions on how to find them. He wasn't sure if he was hyperventilating or not breathing at all, but either way, his head felt dizzy and his lips buzzed.

He was never going to get away. No matter how far or how long he ran, he would never be able to escape the horrors of his own mind.


	29. Hear Yourself Speak

Hinata stood in front of Konohamaru's door, her hand tightening around the strap of her tiny backpack. Unlike the first time she'd come to visit him for the sleepover and he'd picked her up in his mom's minivan, she'd braved the trek herself and made it the whole way on her own. The journey through the Seattle public transportation system was one she was familiar with in concept, having taken it with Neji around the city many times, but being the first time she'd traveled alone and the first time to this particular destination, a bout of nerves had plagued her so badly that her hands had shaken the entire ride. The nice older lady she'd ended up sitting next to had noticed her shaking hands and rapid breathing, and asked if she was lost. Of course, Hinata wasn't, and she would have eventually figured out which connecter to take - probably - but it had been nice for the elderly lady to point her in the right direction, taking a little bit of the guesswork out of the equation. Now that she had finally arrived, all of Hinata's nerves were fried and she was ready to go home already.

She knocked timedly, and the door was instantly wrenched open as if the person had been standing directly behind it waiting for her, and Hinata found her frayed nerves being soothed somewhat by the beaming smile Konohamaru bestowed upon her.

"Hinata! You made it! How was the ride over?"

 _Long,_ Hinata's mind supplied, followed immediately by, _and terrifying, and crowded, and noisy, and-_

She cut herself off before her mind could supply any more unhelpful adjectives, turning a weak smile on Konohamaru as he held the door open wider for her. "It-t was okay."

"That's good. I'm glad you made it okay. My mom said that earlier this morning it was really slow, so I was wondering if maybe there was an accident on one of the lies or something, but I couldn't find anything on the traffic report when I looked, so…"

Konohamaru continued to chatter as he lead Hinata into the same living room they had watched movies in a few days prior, his unfamiliar prose washing over her head. She didn't know exactly what he was talking about, but it was still nice to hear his confident voice, so she didn't bother to try and stop him. Dropping her small bookbag on the floor next to a chair, she looked around the room, marking the differences between now and the last time she'd been there. When she'd joined the trio of troublemakers for their movie night, the couches and chairs had all been arranged closer to the television with a garnish of fluffy blankets and soft pillows, but now the furniture had regained what she surmised to be its natural position, tastefully decorated with a few embroidered throw pillows and an afghan draped over the back of the couch. It had looked messily comfortable before, but now it looked homey and clean, like someone had taken great pains to hide the wear that came from being lived in. She rather like it better this way, she decided as she trailed a hand across the colorful crocheted afghan and discovered that it was homemade.

"So, what do you think?"

Hinata was startled out of her thoughts by Konohamaru's sudden question. She hadn't been paying attention to what he had been saying, so his inquiry took her by surprise and her hands started shaking from her embarrassment.

"S-sorry," she squeaked, shrinking into her herself. "I w-wasn't, uh… I- I d-didn't…"

To her surprise, Konohamaru didn't seem angry that she hadn't been paying attention to him. He just flapped a hand to dismiss her worries and repeated his question. "'S alright. I was just curious what you thought about the room. This is how we normally have it arranged."

"I l-like it," Hinata offered shyly. "It's… comfortable."

It was true; the way everything was arranged reminded her of the clean and comforting way she placed the furniture in her own room, and the ambience soothed her frazzled nerves slightly. She sat down timedly on the end of the couch - almost perching on the armrest as she tried to take up as little space as possible - and ran her fingers over the bumpy embroidery of a small bird on the pillow next to her.

Konohamaru plopped down beside her, taking up more space than she dared to, though still keeping a respectful distance between himself and his guest. "Glad you like it."

Hinata stayed quiet for a few seconds, waiting to see if Konohamaru was going to speak again, before clearing her throat delicately. "S-so, um, are Ud-don and M-Moegi coming or…?"

"Yeah, about that…" Now Konohamaru looked a little nervous as he passed a hand through his hair. "They can't make it. They just told me a little while ago. So it'll just be the two of us. Are you… okay with that?"

Hinata quickly sucked a breath into her lungs before her chest froze and she couldn't breathe anymore. She hadn't expected this venture to be just the two of them, had planned on Udon's calm and Moegi's ability to lighten any mood to help her if she got nervou again - especially in light of the picture that had been newly delivered to her phone that caused her cheeks to flame every time she even remembered she saved it, let alone every time she looked at it - but this was something that she had wanted to do. She had asked for this and Konohamaru had agreed, and quite selflessly at that. She forced the air to leave her frozen chest in a single huff of air that stirred the bangs that draped over her brow.

"It-t's f-fine," she whispered, pressing her lips into some semblance of a smile that she wasn't even sure if Konohamaru saw, since she had her face downturned.

"If you're sure. Just tell me if you ever want to stop or if you're uncomfortable or anything."

Konohamaru quickly jumped to his feet again, grabbing a pair of over-the-ear headphones that were already attached to an mp3 player. He had obviously set them up ahead of time, and he ruefully scratched the back of his head at the questioning glance Hinata cast between him and the device as he handed it to her.

"I was trying to pick out some music," he admitted in response to her glance. "I wasn't quite sure what kind of music you liked, though, so I gave up in the end."

"I l-like anything…" Hinata murmured, staring at the headphones in her lap. They were bigger than any she'd ever worn before, and they looked a little intimidating. Surely the weight alone would crush her skull if she tried to put them on? "H-how does this-s help, again? Just so th-that I d-don't hear myself?"

"I think that's the idea." Konohamaru frowned. "That's what they did in the movie, anyway. Do you wanna just try it and see if anything happens?"

"Um… s-sure."

Hinata lifted the headphones from her lap and regarded them for a suspicious second before pulling them down over her ears. They were too wide for her head, and slipped so far down her head that they rested uncomfortably on the tops of her ears, threatening to slip off her head totally.

"I d-don't think this is-s right…" she heard herself say as if through a great distance, quelling the double urge to either cry in mortification or giggle at the situation. Or perhaps both.

"Here, let me help you with that."

Like with her own voice, the padding of the headphones, even if it wasn't situated correctly, muffled Konohamaru's words. A look of concentration on his face, he reached forward and grasped the band of the headphones resting on top of her head, then tightened a moveable part of the strap that she hadn't noticed before. The cups traveled upwards to rest securely over her ears, muffling the outside world.

Konohamaru asked her a question, but the words were too quiet for Hinata to discern with any degree of credibility, so she slipped one of the soft cups off of her ear.

"Wh-what was that?"

"Well, that answers that question," he laughed. "These are noise cancelling headphones. I was wondering if you could hear me."

"A l-little, but I can't understand what you're s-saying."

"Perfect." He slipped the headphones back over her ears, then asked another question that she didn't understand. She shook her head at him, to which he gave a thumbs up. He grabbed the attached mp3 player from its spot on the couch between them and held it up, mouthing, "Ready?"

The absurdity of the situation finally hit Hinata with the sensation of nerves balling up into a tangled mass in her stomach. She was going to try something she'd seen in a movie to get rid of a lifelong speech impediment. It sounded stupid when she thought of it like that, but she couldn't back out now, not when Konohamaru had already done all this for her. Taking a deep breath, she nodded.

Konohamaru nodded back, then glanced down at the device in his hands. His expression immediately turned to one of concentration as he flicked through the hundreds of songs that must be loaded onto it, tongue poking out of the side of his mouth. Earlier, he'd said he'd tried to pick one out, but obviously he'd been unsuccessful in the endeavour. It was almost kind of cute, Hinata found herself thinking, that he was so focused on finding the perfect one.

His finger cautiously tapped a title, and suddenly Hinata's ear were filled with a loud, upbeat tempo she recognized from the little exposure she'd had to the kind of music the jazz orchestra played as a big band swing. She jumped a little at the sudden decibels, flapping her hands to try and get Konohamaru to turn it down.

" _What_?" He asked with a quizzical look, through she couldn't hear the words, only see his lips move.

Hinata yanked the headphones from her head before they could do any more damage to her eardrums. "T-too l-loud," she gasped, and Konohamaru quickly looked guilty and adjusted the volume down.

"Sorry about that. I always forget that I like to crank the volume. Other than that, though, is it okay?"

Hinata bit her lip in consideration. It was probably a little more… upbeat than anything she would have picked for herself, but that just allowed her to focus on something other than what she was about to do, so she nodded shakily.

"Y-yeah, it will w-work."

"Good." Konohamaru positioned the headphones back over her ears - why did he keep doing that? Hinata could do it herself. Maybe he just wanted an excuse to run the tips of his fingers through her hair, as he was doing now…? - and gave her another questioning thumbs up, which she nodded at. The volume was at a much better level now.

They sat, staring at each other in silence covered up by the music blaring from the headphones, for almost a minute before a frown creased the skin between Hinata's eyes. " _Wh-what am I supp-posed to say_?" She muttered, feeling the catch of the stutter in her throat even though she couldn't hear it.

Konohamaru said something that she couldn't hear nor catch from the movements of his lips, and at Hinata's blank expression he quickly pulled out his phone, typed something on it, and held it up for her to see.

 _Do you want something to read?_

A dark bolt of irrational fear shot into Hinata's gut at the thought. The last time she'd been called on to read aloud in front of a group of people had been the last time she'd had to appear before a partial council of elders, and that had been the final straw they'd used to decide that she was completely useless to them. Her breathing came in harsh, hyperventilatory gasps at just the memory, and she quickly shook her head.

If Konohamaru noticed her change in demeanor, he didn't remark on it. Instead, he just erased what he'd typed before and held up a new message.

 _Something you have memorized, then?_

Something she had memorized. Hinata could do that. Part of her education had included memorizing and reciting a lot of laws and rules of the Hyuuga family, a old-fashioned tactic not often used in modern schools but still useful, but none of those were things she could recite in front of Konohamaru without breaking the same family laws that she was reciting.

As if sensing her hesitation, Konohamaru added to his earlier suggestion.

 _The Pledge of Allegiance?_

The Pledge of Allegiance… Hinata knew that. Probably. She had learned it a long time ago, but it wasn't something the elders liked Hyuuga reciting very much. Probably because it involved pledging oneself to something other than the family. Still, she should be able to dig it out of the recesses of her brain.

" _I p-pledge all-all-a-_ "

It was already no good. Hinata wasn't sure if it was because of her uncertainty of the words or her general nervousness of the situation, but the word allegiance, a tricky word to pronounce even by someone who didn't have a speech impediment, stuck to her tongue and refused to budge. Grimacing, she tried again.

" _I pled… p-pleg… l… alleg-gian…_ "

That time was even worse. Maybe it was just the hard word that was throwing her off. Taking a deep breath, Hinata ran through the entire passage in her head so she was sure she knew all the words, then let the air out of her lungs as calmly as she could. She could do this.

" _I p-pledge alleg… allegiance! Allegiance to the f-flag… of the United S-States of Am… Amer… Amri… Marca_."

Nope. She couldn't do this. Not being able to hear herself wasn't helping in the slightest; she could still feel the words catching in the back of her throat, the leaden weight of her tongue, the clumsy way her lips failed to form the right shapes and faltered in their patterns. This was useless. She pulled the headphones from over her ears, cutting off the soundtrack swing music and replacing it with the quiet sounds of the room. The music still floated from the headphones, but since they were no longer over her ears, it sounded tinney and weak.

"It's n-not wo… wor… w-working. M-maybe I sh-should just g-give up-p."

"Not happening," Konohamaru denied, surprising her with his vehemence. "If everyone gave up the first time they failed, where would we be now? Probably without having invented the wheel yet. Give it another shot."

Hinata looked down into her lap, her knuckles lightning as her grip on the headphones unconsciously tightened. "Th-this isn't-t exactly the f-first time I've tried s-something like th-this, you know."

"All the more reason not to give up yet! Please, Hinata?"

Hinata wasn't quite sure why Konohamaru was this fixated on getting this to work. It wasn't like her stutter impacted him in any way. Was he trying to help her to repay Neji in some way? Did he just want to feel accomplished about fixing something others had told her was incurable?

Was he trying to get in her good graces? Did he want something from her?

Whatever the reason, Hinata felt her skin crawl slightly. She was certain that Konohamaru's intentions weren't anything bad, but that still didn't mean that she was comfortable not knowing what his motives were. Perhaps it was her rigid upbringing, but she had quickly learned not to accept gifts without looking for the strings.

Fidgeting slightly on the end of the couch, Hinata whispered, "Why are you d-doing this?"

A frown in his voice, Konohamaru asked in reply, "What do you mean?"

"I'm n-not special or anything. Why would you w-want to sp-spend so much t-time fixing someone as broken as m-me?"

"What?!" Konohamaru leaned forward, laying a hand over hers. "You're not broken, Hinata! Who told you that?"

A lump formed in Hinata's throat that she swallowed past. "I d-don't need anyone to tell me that-t. It's obvious."

"Hinata." Suddenly Konohamaru was closer than Hinata remembered, reaching out to tip her chin upwards, forcing her to look him in the eye, and cupping her cheeks in both of his hands. "You are not broken. You have worth. In fact, I'd say that you're braver than I ever could be."

"How can you s-say that?!" Hinata gasped. "I don't…! I can't…! I can't even…! I'm afraid of everything!"

 _Even you_ , she added in her head, but true to form, she was too nervous to say it out loud.

"But that's what makes you so brave, Hinata," Konohamaru countered gently, his eyes steady and warm. "Things scare you, but you still do them, even if it's ten times harder for you than it would be for anyone else. But that just makes you ten times stronger than the rest of us can ever hope to be."

It was exactly the same thing Neji had been telling her for years, yet somehow, coming from Konohamaru it was more believable. Maybe it was because Neji had a tendency to walk on eggshells around her - not that she didn't appreciate it, but the way he treated her was vastly different from the way he treated everyone else and sometimes it stuck out to her - but her gut churned in equal parts hope and distrust at Konohamaru's version of the same encouragement she had been hearing all her life.

Perhaps it was this that allowed her to pick up the headphones again, the music drifting faintly from them becoming more distinct with proximity. Giving Konohamaru a shaky but sure smile, she whispered, "Maybe… maybe one more try wouldn't hurt anything."

"That's the spirit!" He clapped Hinata on the shoulder with a little more force than she was accustomed to, and she had to hide a wince even though it hadn't actually hurt. "Maybe a little bit of a mood change might make you less nervous and help a bit. Let me get you a different song."

Nodding in reluctant agreement, Hinata slipped the headphones back over her ears. The catchy swing tune paused as he tapped something on the screen of the mp3 player, leaving silence behind in its wake that was soon overtaken by another sound as he touched the screen again. Like the first song, it had a jazzy feel to it, but unlike the first song, this one was slow, almost torturously so, and gentle. It soothed something inside of her that she hadn't noticed being frazzled, likely by the jagged pace the swing song had set before. She took a deep breath, then slowly let it trail out from between her lips. She could do it. This time for sure.

Instead of restarting the speech and having to tackle _allegiance,_ which was a beast of a word to pronounce, again, Hinata chose to keep going from when she had left off. " _And to the R-Republic…_ "

It was already no good; Hinata could feel the shiver of hesitation in her throat on the word without even needing to hear the stutter. The slip-up threw her concentration off, and she stumbled even harder on the next words.

" _T-t-to-to wh-which-ch it-t… sta-_ "

Hinata was suddenly cut off by a crooning voice in her ear that made her jump. " _Summertime,_ " the raspy female voice promised, " _and the livin' is easy…_ "

She pulled the headphones half off her ears. "It's n-not working. And someone started s-singing."

"They did?" With a frown, Konohamaru checked the device in his grip. "Oh, right. I thought this was the instrumental version of this song, but I hit the wrong one. Do you want me to change it?"

" _...and the cotton is high_ ," the song crooned, and Hinata found herself distracted by it. While she was paying attention to the single headphone still emitting music directly into her brain, she heard herself say, "N-no, it's fine. I like it."

Konohamaru's face instantly split into a grin. "Really? I'm glad you do! It's one of my favorite songs." He reached up and centered the headphones back over Hinata's ears, then asked her something that looked like "ready?" but that she couldn't hear because of the song.

Instead of answering, Hinata just pushed the cups of the headphones harder over her ears. She shouldn't have asked to do this in the first place; it was just a matter of too little, too late for her now. She'd grow up with this stutter for so long now that it would be impossible to remove it, and she was just fooling herself if she thought otherwise. Overcome with the hopelessness of the situation, Hinata didn't try to speak again right away, just sat there and let the music wash over her.

It was different from most music she liked to listen to regularly, but had its own unique set of charms. The audio was obviously old, recorded before the age of digital and remastered to fit modern formats. The woman's voice was scratchy, not the lyrically smooth tones Hinata had come to expect from well-trained singers, and yet it was still pleasing to the ear in its own way. She was concentrating on the music so hard that she almost didn't notice when the song ended and started again.

After the introduction played, the woman's voice started up again. " _Summertime…_ "

This time, Hinata hummed along with it uncertainly, forgetting that Konohamaru was in the room and could hear her because she couldn't hear herself with the noise-canceling headphones. The verses all had the same tune and it was a simple one, so it was easy to pick up, and by the time the song ended and started again, she could humm all the way through the melody without any mistakes or hesitations.

This time, when the woman sang the word _Summertime_ again, Hinata joined in, her voice a little shaky - not that she could hear herself - as she tried to remember the words. She lagged behind a couple of times during the verse, squeezing her eyes shut in concentration as she tried to remember the words, but made it through the whole section of the song.

As soon as the last word had faded from her lips, Hinata felt the headphones being pulled from her head. Her eyes popped open in surprise to Konohamaru's wide gaze just a few inches away from her own, his fingers covering hers from where she had left them on the cups that were previously covering her ears.

"That was awesome, Hinata!" He breathed in excitement.

Hinata instinctively shrank away from his breathless smile. "Wh-wh-what was-s?"

"Your singing! I didn't know you could sing!"

"I c-can't," Hinata frowned. "I was n-never able t-to learn be-because of my st-tutter."

"But have you ever actually tried before, or did someone just tell you that?"

That question threw Hinata, because she didn't actually know the answer. Yes, part of her early education had involved music, but she'd stopped when she was very young because she'd been unable to handle the performance aspect of it. She'd always assumed singing was out of the question for her because of her stutter, but when was the last time she had tried? The most she ever did was humming along with the music from her earbuds as she worked…

Which was, instinctively, exactly what she'd just done here. Apparently Konohamaru could see the play of uncertain emotions across her face, because he placed a gentle pressure on the headphones again.

"Try it again. I want to show you something."

Hinata allowed her hands to be guided down again, replacing the headphones over her ears. The song was still playing, but Konohamaru tapped the screen of the device and restarted it, mouthing " _Close your eyes again_ ," to Hinata in the face of her nervous expression.

Taking a calming breath to steady herself, Hinata did as she was bid and tried to relax into the music. She wasn't as calm as she had been the first time, but she had managed to pull herself into an acceptable frame of mind by the time the lyrics began.

She made it all the way through the first verse again, this time with more confidence on the words, before the music stopped and her eyes popped open to see Konohamaru miming to her take the headphones off. When she did, she noticed that he had his phone in his hand, which he hadn't had before. Sliding the headphones off with a frown, she pointed at the phone.

"Why d-do you have that-t?"

Konohamaru bit the inside of his lip. "Please don't be mad at me."

Why would she be mad at him? Hinata frowned, bt her frown soon disappeared in a squeak of indignation when Konohamaru hit something on his phone and her own voice floated out of the tiny speakers back at her, shaky and a little unsure.

"You recorded me without asking?!"

Even though he had been expecting it, Konohamaru looked a little taken aback by the force of her anger. "I thought you'd say no if I asked-"

"Of course I would! Delete it right now!"

Hinata launched herself at Konohamaru, trying to stop her own voice from haunting her and delete the recording at the same time, but Konohamaru held it just out of her reach.

"Hold on!" He shouted, grabbing her with his unoccupied hand. "Just listen to it, okay?"

Hinata would rather have done anything else in that moment than listen to her own sub-par voice singing back to her, but she stopped struggling at Konohamaru's bidding and listened to the recording, albeit begrudgingly. He stopped it and started it at the beginning again so she could hear the whole thing.

"Yeah, I g-get it," she muttered after listening to the first line. "I'm n-not very g-good, alright-t?"

"You're not as bad as you think you are, Hinata. And that's not what I wanted you to hear. Listen to the timing, okay?"

The timing? What about the timing? Frowning, Hinata did as she was bid. What was wrong about her timing? She was singing it exactly the way the woman in the song had, wasn't… she…?

Singing… it… exactly… on tempo?

She heard a chuckled from Konohamaru when she realized exactly what he had wanted to show her, probably from the stunned expression on her face. When she sang, there was no hesitation in any of her words, just the placement of them on each beat as was dictated by the rhythm of the song. Her stutter had all but disappeared.

With wide eyes, Hinata looked up to find Konohamaru grinning back at her. Her throat felt tight, but this time, it wasn't because she was she was afraid.

"Can you… can you teach me how to sing? Please?"

Konohamaru's grin spread so wide, Hinata thought his face might split in two. "Ask and you shall receive."


	30. An Uneasy, Dark Truce

Itachi paced back and forth between the table and the empty doorway, his harried footsteps tapping out a tempo proportionate to the panic surging through his body. That Hyuuga boy should have arrived already; what was keeping him?! Back when Itachi had been doing family work, there was no way he'd just sit around when his partner was in trouble! Did this boy have no sense of urgency? Sasuke's life was at stake here!

A sigh echoed from the chair at the head of the table. "Itachi, you should sit."

"No!" Itachi spun around and thrust an angry finger in Kisame's general direction. "You don't tell me to calm down, Kisame! My brother is in danger right now, and that boy is taking his sweet time getting here! Every second we waste is another change for them to kill him- or worse!"

"I didn't tell you to calm down," Kisame said placatingly, scraping his chair across the floor as he rose to walk to Itachi. "I just asked you to sit. Besides, it's only been about twenty minutes since we got off the phone with him, and it's a half-hour walk from where he was to here if you know where you're going. He'll be here soon."

"But he should be here now!"

Kisame gently grabbed Itachi's trembling outstretched wrist, and when he didn't protest the action, used it to reel the blind man into a comforting hug. "I know you're scared, Itachi, but we just have to wait. He'll get here when he gets here, and all we can do in the meantime is wait."

"I should have never given him your number," Itachi muttered into the fabric of Kisame's clothes, allowing himself to be comforted by the hand patting his shoulder.

"He said we were the only ones he could turn to for help. Would rather your brother died without your knowledge, or was rescued with your help and you knowing about his situation?"

Itachi was silent for a moment. "Is it bad of me to almost prefer the first one?"

"Not if you can justify it."

Pushing away from Kisame, Itachi moved to pull a chair back from the table and drop down into it. "Because it reminds me of what I went through. For ordinary people, a wraith's aura is uncomfortable enough, but for people as perceptive to ghosts as us, it's psychological torture just to be near them. I only lasted five hours before I thought it was a good idea to carve out my own eyes out with a dull butter knife, and there was only one holding me captive. He's got more than that, and it's already been twelve for him. If he hasn't passed the point of no return already, there's a very specific reason they haven't driven him that far yet, and I don't want to know what that reason is."

"So what you're saying is you would give up on him at this point?"

"No." Itachi swallowed and lowered his hands into his lap. "But I'd be prepared to put a bullet into his brain the second I saw him if I needed to."

Kisame retook his seat and lay a hand on Itachi's shoulder. "And do you think that outcome is a possibility?"

"I hope it isn't, but it's likely it is," Itachi admitted. "And the Hyuuga boy won't be able to do it. His superiors will never allow it. So, that task would fall to-"

"Me." Kisame interrupted before Itachi could finish his sentence, his tone leaving no room for argument.

Itachi's jaw dropped. "Kisame, you can't honestly expect-"

"That you could kill your own brother? No, I don't expect that you could."

"Kisame! This is not your fight! You don't have to be involved with this!"

Kisame snorted. "Just like it wasn't my fight when I helped you get rid of my father's ghost? I'm just as much a part of this world now as you are, Itachi."

"That was different, and I don't think you understand this situation!" Itachi grabbed his shirtsleeve. "A pre-formed wraith is a completely different kind of ghost from a full wraith, and that Hyuuga boy is coming for my help because of my expertise in the subject, however unpleasant a situation that expertise may come from! You can't get involved in this; his family would never allow it!"

"Sounds to me like his 'family' has washed their hands of the two of them," Kisame said quietly. "And you've got a lot to learn if you think I'd let you shoulder that kind of burden after everything you've already been through."

"But this doesn't have to be your fight," Itachi protested one last time, though he knew his words sounded less convinced of himself and more convinced by Kisame.

"It became my fight when I accepted you into this gang, Itachi. We are all brothers here, bound by blood, and I'll be damned if I let you kill yourself like that."

"But-"

"Have you ever killed a man before, Itachi? And no, ghosts don't count," Kisame continued without waiting for him to voice his by now half-hearted protest. "You know I have, and it's not an easy thing to do, like breaking a glass or burning a piece of paper. Pulling a trigger is easy, but watching a man die, watching the light go out of his eyes and knowing you were the reason, is indescribably hard. Right now, you're on the slow road to recovery, but I know if I let you do that, if I let you kill your brother, even to save him, you'll fall back worse than you were before I met you, and I can't let that happen. Not when I promised to save you."

Itachi kept up his act of defiance for a few more seconds before he caved, collapsing forward and knowing Kisame would catch him. Sure enough, he found himself cradled in a strong embrace before he'd had the chance to tip forward more than a few inches, and he allowed a strangled noise to make it through the lump in his throat. "What did I ever do to deserve you?"

"I think it's less about deserving and more about being owed for everything you've gone through."

"You have an interesting philosophy of the world."

"I'd like to think so. This life tends to rub off on you in that way."

There was a commotion on the street outside that pulled both of their attentions from their conversation. Shouting that sounded suspiciously like it came from Raiga drifted through the open window, followed by a very unmanly scream in from a manly voice.

"That's probably him," Kisame murmured into the side of Itachi's neck.

He responded with a disparaging hum.

"Should we go out and help?"

"Nah; let him suffer a few more minutes. An altercation with Raiga can show what anyone's made of."

Neji had seen the people lounging around the scurvy neighborhood Kisame had given him directions to, wearing ratty and torn clothing and smoking the stubby ends of cigarettes that glowed in the wan light of the very early morning like lost fireflies, and he had seen when a few of them had peeled away from the alley walls they had been leaning against and begun to follow him. Swallowing nervously and pulling the edges of his cuff down over his expensive cufflinks, Neji quickened his pace to as fast as he could go without appearing to run away, reading the numbers on the buildings as he went. Not high enough yet; it was getting there, but not quickly enough for his shot nerves.

It wasn't likely they saw people like him around here very often. Oh, he wasn't talking about the suit - the other day, Kisame and Itachi had been wearing suits, so it was likely the upper echelon of mob ranks in these places were well dressed, and it was only the goons who did the dirty work that were dressed like the men currently following him - he meant the fact that he was an outsider, intruding on their territory. A quick glance at the number written on the scrap of paper crumpled almost to incoherency in his hand reiterated what he already knew, soothing his frayed nerves somewhat. He would probably get there before they caught up to him at this rate.

The building he was looking for suddenly came into focus a few buildings up, the number written on the mailbox proclaiming itself to be the same address Neji had written down from Kisame's instructions. He held back a sigh of relief, not sure if it would aggravate his pursuers, and quickened his steps one more notch so he quickly stood in front of the iron gate keeping the building away from the rest of the street.

It was latched, but unlocked seeing that the latch had been broken away from the swinging door and was only attached to the post next to it. Swallowing against his suddenly dry throat, Neji pushed the gate open and took a few steps into the yard in the direction of the front door. The building was eerily quiet, even for the early morning - and especially if he counted the men who had peeled out of the darkness to stalk him earlier. Casting a quick glance over his shoulder, he say that his pursuers had disappeared back from where they had come, no trace of them reaining where they had stood a scant few seconds before. Neji felt his heart jump in his chest, even as he tried to convince himself that this was a good thing. It was a good thing, right?

That look over his shoulder gave him just enough distraction for the man to bleed out of the darkness ahead of him and stand directly in his path, so when Neji faced forward again, he almost bumped directly into his chest.

"Well, what do we have here?" He sneered, pulling himself up to a full height that towered over even Neji's tall frame. His hair was longer and styled wildly, as it it had been slept in by a family of mice then hit with a tornado. "I think someone's on the wrong side of the tracks. Do you wanna turn around and forget about this whole trespassing thing, or do I have to teach you what happens when you delve too far into the Mist?"

Into the Mist? What was he talking about? Neji cleared his throat awkwardly and attempted to sidestep the man. "I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong idea. I'm expected, so if you could just- step aside-"

"Ah-ha! Not so fast, wise guy!" The man blocked his path again, leaning toward Neji with a menacing smile. "He says he's expected, Miru! How about that? You know anything about this?"

"The Boss has not informed me of any meetings scheduled today, Raiga" a woman's voice floated out from the shadows near the door, her words and tone clipped and professional. "I also have never seen this man before. What is your name, trespasser?"

"I'm not a-!" Neji started, affronted by being accused of a crime twice in less than a minutes, but thought better of his protest when Raiga's smile grew wider, revealing several teeth that had been replaced with fakes that looked rather… uncomfortably pointy. "Neji. My name is Neji. Kisame told me to come here."

If possible, Raiga's threatening grin grew even wider at Neji's statement. "Oh, so you're on a first-name with the Boss, now are you? Tell me, to what does he owe the pleasure of this early-morning meeting? Hmm?"

"I believe," Neji replied stiffly, "that matter is between myself and your… Boss, and has nothing to do with you. Now, stand aside so I may pass!"

Neji zero warning before a fist slammed into the side of his face, knocking him back on his ass. The little grass, mixed with coarse gravel, that managed to grow on the poor excuse for a front lawn was damp, bleeding moisture into the seat of his pants in addition to the pain from the sharp contours of the rocky ground. Neji couldn't help it; his jaw dropped as he gazed up at his attacker, whose face was still stuck in his menacingly grin.

"No one tells orders me around," he snarled, taking a step towards Neji and placing a foot on top of his knee. "Least of all not some nobody like you. You want to get pass me? Fine. Try it with a broken kneecap."

He would do it; Neji had no doubt about that. The confident, unaffected look on his face said that this was something he was used to and wouldn't back down from. A gasp of pain escaped his lips as Raiga slowly increased the pressure on his knee, desperately searching for the right words to get him to back off.

"Look, you're making a mistake-"

"Raiga," a quiet, yet authoritarian voice interjected from outside of Neji's range of vision. "That's enough."

Instantly the pressure lifted away from Neji's knee, and Raiga turned and inclined his head to the newcomer. "Boss. You know this shoob?"

 _Boss._ So the man who had interjected was Kisame. Neji struggled into a vertical position, wincing at his bruised knee and tailbone, sore from landing on the ground as hard as he had. His cheek twinged at the motion, and he grimaced, rubbing the spot where Raiga had decked him. And what the hell was a shoob, anyway?

"He's an… associate," Kisame said vaguely, his eyes hard. A shiver went down Neji's spine at the sight; the man really did have a terrifying look to him, especially dressed as he was now in a more casual outfit that highlighted his strength and bearing better than the pressed suit he had been wearing before, which had only served to diminish his dangerous aura.

"We were not informed of this." The voice came from the shadows near the door again, and this time Neji could make out the shape of a woman leveling a solid stare at Kisame. "You said you would inform us if you were meeting with any members of rival gangs beforehand."

Kisame responded without taking his gaze away from Neji's. "He's not from a rival association; he's a loose end from my - or rather, Itachi's - past. It was very last minute. I apologize for not informing you before now."

"Hm." The woman frowned, accepting Kisame's explanation but clearly not liking it. "Do you need anything from us?"

"No, I- _we_ can handle this ourselves. There's no need for you to get involved."

"Rodger, Boss." With a cheesy salute, Raiga flashed one last menacing grin at Neji and departed into the building.

The woman was less eager to follow Kisame's orders. "Are you sure there's nothing I can help you with? I don't think I need to remind you of the vow we all took. The problems of a brother's past is in his past, but the problems of a brother belong to all of us."

Kisame finally looked away from Neji and flashed the woman a true smile, his stoic expression melting away and taking part of his dangerous aura with him. "I appreciate it, I really do, Miru, but we've got this one. After all…" he turned back to Neji, and his face immediately hardened again. "It's not really _our_ problem, is it, Hyuuga boy? It's _yours_."

His eyes showed no compassion, and Neji felt a surge of understanding. Kisame had no stake in this; he cared only for Itachi and the distress he felt. If he wanted to find willing help here, he had to do more than just expect it.

Keeping his eyes locked with Kisame's, Neji sank back down to his knees, feeling a spike of pride when he saw the uncertain waver in Kisame's expression.

"I need help," he admitted, holding his hands out to his sides, palms facing Kisame. "I need _your_ help. Right now, there is a man held captive who needs my help, but I'm not strong enough on my own. I know you owe me nothing and I am a proud man, but I am not above begging if I must. _Please._ You're the only option I have."

"You say that like you're certain he's still alive."

The voice came from behind Kisame, and Neji's gaze faltered from his stare to flick back and take in Itachi's form, leaning against the doorjamb. Kisame jumped at the sound as well, turning to mutter out of the corner of his mouth.

"I thought I said you could wait inside and I'd deal with him."

"You did- I decided I didn't want to." Itachi pushed himself away from the doorframe and took a few careful steps towards Neji. "How long has it been since Sasuke was captured?"

Neji didn't need to calculate the time in his head; he'd been acutely aware of every passing second since he'd woken up. "Almost fourteen hours now."

"Fucking- seriously?! How many?"

"I don't know the exact number," Neji admitted. "But it's at least five."

Passing a hand over the badana hiding his damaged eye sockets, Itachi let out a shaky breath. "It's hopeless at this point. He's either dead by now, or it would be kinder to send him there instead of rescuing him."

"He's not. Dead or crazy."

Itachi's head jerked up. "How?" The word was clipped, but Neji could tell the endless questions hidden behind that one word.

"This wasn't… our first mistake," Neji continued slowly, watching the play of emotions on Itachi's face as he slowly realized what Neji meant. "We met the same wraiths earlier, and they… they escaped us, after having seen Sasuke use… _that_."

Itachi sucked in a breath. "Are you fucking _mental_?!" He exploded, his fingers twitching as if he wished they were wrapped around Neji's neck instead of empty air. "Of all the-! You just _let_ them-! That is our cardinal rule, the only one we never _ever_ break! How could you possibly make a mistake that huge!"

"It may be the only thing keeping Sasuke alive right now," Neji said quietly. At Itachi's intense hiss, he quickly continued, "They want him alive and sane, because they want him to explain how it works. They want to see if they can… duplicate it."

" _Jesus Christ_ ," Itachi swore quietly. "You're absolutely certain of this?"

"I had a knife shoved in my mouth with the threat of cutting my throat from the inside if he didn't comply, so yeah, I'm pretty sure."

Itachi pressed his hand to his mouth, then nodded. "This changes things. We should… yes. Talk more. Kisame?"

"If you think you can handle it," he said in a low voice.

"I'm fine," Itachi muttered back, the corners of his mouth tipping down in a displeased frown. Then he raised his voice and called to the woman that Neji hadn't noticed hadn't left. "And Miru?"

The woman started at the sound of her name. "Oh- what?"

"Please forget what you just heard us discuss- if you understood anything from it."

Kisame jerked a thumb to the door. "Get in. I think we have a lot to discuss."


	31. The Marvel Effect

Wooph! I've had so little time lately that I've been dashing these out without notes on the top, but not today! Today I have plenty of time to thank everyone who's reviewed these past couple of weeks that I haven't been able to thank yet! I'm so sorry it took this long!

I love that you come back every chapter SoraROCK. It really keeps me going!

And to the two new fans I seem to have picked up:

Reverie2800: I'm glad you like it so much! Just try not to die from the suspense before I can resolve it ;)

Shiroi Hato-san: Oh no! Don't forget to sleep! I'm so glad you like my story that much though, and don't worry; I have absolutely no plans to give drop this story before it finishes. In fact, that should be sometime in either November or early December, so you won't have to wait long!

That's the end of it for this time, so see you next Sunday! (Yes, I know it's not Sunday today, but it was a holiday weekend where I'm from so it's kinda the Sunday of my weekend right now.) Addi out!

* * *

By the time Neji had finished speaking, quickly and yet accurately recounting all that had happened since he and Sasuke had last left Itachi and Kisame's company, Itachi's face has gone completely white and his shoulders shook slightly. Neji felt bad just watching him and almost stopped several times, but thoughts of Sasuke suffering under the wraith's influence was enough to overcome his secondhand discomfort and he ploughed ahead with the gruesome story. When he finally closed his mouth, swallowing against a throat dry from speaking too long, Itachi's shoulders slumped and he allowed his head to fall forward into his hands.

Instantly Kisame was by his side, strong hands that looked incredibly large in comparison to Itachi's weak biceps giving a comforting squeeze to his shoulders.

"You alright there, Itachi?"

"I'll manage," he groaned as he lifted his head from his hands. Neji noticed that the colored bandana wrapped his head had slipped upwards slightly, exposing the bottom part of an ugly scar that stretched from his right cheekbone up into what looked like- was that an empty eye socket? Itachi must have realized as soon as he moved his head, however, because he reached up and readjusted the bandana to cover up the scar before speaking again.

"I don't know how someone of your caliber managed to screw up so badly, but it's almost impressive how much of a mess you've managed to make things."

Neji gritted his teeth in annoyance; he'd already been given this speech by his grandfather, and he didn't need to hear it again. "Which is why time is of the essence, so if you don't mind-"

"And you have no other options? No one else you can turn to?"

"If I had, do you think I'd be involving you?"

"Fair point. Then allow me to be frank with you, Hyuuga boy," Itachi announced. "I understand the position you're in and I want my brother safe as much as you do - perhaps even more - but I cannot help you rescue him."

Neji's jaw dropped. Wherever he thought Itachi was going with this conversation with, it certainly wasn't that. "But- but why!?" He gasped, stumbling over his words with a numb tongue. "Why won't you help? Didn't you-?! Then why have me come here if you were just going to turn me away?!"

"I didn't say 'won't'," Itachi reiterated with a pained look on his face. "I said 'can't'. I am physically incapable of helping you. If I were to try, I would only end up hindering you."

"Again, why?!"

A quiet scoff echoed across the table. "Have you _seen_ me? The obvious physical reasons why I would be a shit partner right now?"

"What Itachi means," Kisame quickly cut in, "is that he is both physically and mentally incapable of assisting you in any… ghost-fighting efforts. He is, however, willing to help you plan such an attempt."

"I can't be near those things," Itachi whispered, the blood draining from his cheeks as if the mental image of something horrible was painted against the backs of his empty eyes, where he couldn't blink it away. "Not after… what I… I just can't, understand?"

"I'm sorry, but why did you tell me to come here if you can't help me, then?" Neji blurted out, unable to hold it in any longer despite how insensitive he knew it would sound.

"Because two minds can sometimes see things one, especially a panicked mind, might miss," Itachi countered, the color returning to his face as if having something else to focus on made it easier for him to forget, "and because I was known as one of the best in the business before my accident- though I think if you'd been out in the field at the same time I was, you might have given me a run for my money."

Neji inclined his head slightly, appeased if not happy with the situation; even he had heard muttered whisperings of how good Fugaku's eldest had been before he had been taken out, despite the passing years. "Thank you. What would you recommend, then?"

"I'll go with him instead," Kisame cut in quietly.

For a moment, Neji was almost unsure whether he'd actually heard the words, but the sudden whitening of Itachi's cheeks and his shaking hands, as if all the blood in his body had drained back into his core and left his extremities cold and unusable, convinced him.

* * *

Shikamaru wasn't sure if the darkness of the room he was standing in could be attributed to the time of day or the shadows that spread out from his feet and writhed across the walls and ceiling. There was a window across the room from him, this he knew because he'd come in that way. He'd thought it had been sometime in the afternoon when he'd entered the room with the intention of purging the corrupt, vicious ghosts inside it, but he'd lost track of time again somewhere along the way and now it could be any time from later than evening to the middle of the night. That was happening more and more often as he kept doing this. The more ghosts he eradicated, cutting swaths of spectral energy from the map, always one step ahead of the wraiths, the more he was reminded of his time in the war. The more he thought about the war, the more he remembered Hoffstead.

Hoffstead had been very obviously in love with Shikamaru; he'd hidden it very badly, if he'd even wanted to keep it from his superior at all. Shikamaru had known this, and had used it to his own advantage, first turning Hoffstead into his second in command, confident of his unwavering loyalty, then as the war dragged on and the tension had been too much for both of them to bear, his lover. It had been almost laughably easy to seduce the young man, take and give what they'd needed, then ignore what had happened until the next time. He'd known it was wrong of him to manipulate another human like that at the time, but it was so easy and the war was so hard that somehow, he couldn't bring himself to care until the night they'd both died.

He reminded Shikamaru of Neji in some ways, and in others stood in direct opposition to him. For those oppositions, Shikamaru was glad; he didn't want Neji because he reminded him of Hoffstead- he wanted Neji for himself, for the brilliant mind that refused to back down from a game of chess even when the outcome had already been decided. He hadn't even really wanted Hoffstead himself in the first place; it had only been a matter of convenience that Shikamaru hadn't noticed evolving into friendship until he'd been faced with the prospect of losing it.

Exhaling a long, slow breath out his nose, Shikamaru waved a hand to reign in the shadows that had spread out over the room during his bout of thought. They curled sharply against his restraints, balking at his commands, but came all the same, revealing the quintet of individuals he'd come to suppress. All of them were laying facedown on the ground, as if the weight of the shadows had pinned them there, and a few started to struggle limply now that the pressure was removed. Shikamaru cut off their futile struggles with a shadow noose that darted amongst all of them, causing each in turn to implode in a spectacular display of dark light.

A beam of sunlight fell into the room as the last of the shadows withdrew inside Shikamaru, forcing him to shield his eyes, accustomed to the darkness as they were, and blink rapidly. The level angle, close to horizontal, told him that it was early morning, and he'd been standing there in darkness for the entire night and the better part of the evening before.

Definitely the shadows, then.

* * *

"No! Absolutely not! Kisame, you can't be serious! I won't let you-!"

"You won't _let_ me?" Kisame asked in a dangerous tone of voice that Neji was sure anyone - even perhaps him - except Itachi would have back down from. "I didn't know that you were in a position where you could tell me what I can and cannot do."

"I know, but-! You can't just-! Kisame, this isn't like last time! It won't be just one ghost you can talk some sense into by saying the right combination of words; it will be several very powerful, very bloodthirsty ghosts who will have no qualms about abusing the fact that you can't even see them! There's a reason our families don't let normal people near these kinds of things!"

By the time Itachi was done with his speech, his chest was heaving, but Kisame looked no less convinced.

"So what if I can't see them?"

"Kisame!" Itachi stood up, knocking his chair over backwards ad slamming his hands down on the table. "Maybe an analogy would make this easier for you to understand: this is the equivalent of you and me marching into Lock's headquarters armed with nothing but a pistol each and trying to take out their entire gang. Maybe you could take out a few guys, but I'd be completely useless except as a meat shield and they'd pull semi-automatics on us and we'd be dead before we'd gotten ten steps!"

With a quiet tilt of his head, Kisame asked, "And who am I in that particular metaphor?"

"Me, obviously!"

"With all due respect," Neji cut in, "you've been out of work for quite a long time, Itachi, and some of our methods have changed a bit. It's not a common practice, but it's not unheard of to include someone who can't see ghosts in a mission when we're in a pinch with numbers, provided they already have foreknowledge of the mission and can aim according to directions. I've worked with one before, and your…" he flicked his eyes to the side, trying to figure out what to label Kisame as before finally deciding on: " _colleague_ fits both of those criteria, unless I'm mistaken."

Before he knew what was happening, Neji found himself hauled up by his jacket collar as Itachi spit seething words into his face. "Don't you _dare_ take his side on this! Of everyone in this room, you should know best how dangerous this is! After all, you're the one who let them kidnap my brother to torture him!"

"I know!" Neji shouted back, finally snapping in the face of Itachi's blatant anger. "Which is why I'll do anything to get him back, including using any resource available to me!"

"Then why won't you just swallow your pride and ask for help? Why not admit you fucked up and let someone with a better chance of success take care of it for you?!"

"Because Sasuke isn't the only one I'm trying to protect!" Neji shouted the words into Itachi's face, spitefully proud when he saw his captor flinch. The grip on his collar loosened, and Neji continued, slightly calmer. "And I don't know what they'll do to me if I fail… or to her. Probably the best I could hope for is my own excommunication."

Itachi's hands dropped away from Neji's collar, and he collapsed against the table, his face hidden in his arms. Kisame stood up as well and gently laid his hands on Itachi's slumped shoulders, ready to hold him up if it was needed.

"But does your failure mean the little I have left should be taken from me?" He mumbled into his arms, the words muffled enough that Neji could pretend not to hear them, as they were obviously meant for a more private audience.

"If it makes you feel better, I won't do it," Kisame said quietly, running his fingers through the hair at the back of Itachi's neck.

Itachi raised his face. "Promise?"

"Sure." Kisame glanced in Neji's direction. "But we can't just let him leave empty handed."

"I can't exactly help him formulate a plan when I don't even know where Sasuke's being kept, now can I?"

"That's not exactly what I meant." Kisame left Itachi for a moment, going to a small cabinet in the corner that Neji hadn't paid much attention to earlier in the conversation and throwing it open to reveal a well-stocked firearms cabinet. "The least we could do is give him some kind of weapon," he continued as he ran his hand along the barrels of a few before selecting one and a matching ammo case and bringing it out of the cabinet. "Here."

After flipping the doors closed and carefully securing them, Kisame turned back and offered the gun to Neji. It was small, probably only had five or six shots in it, and could be easily hidden under a waistband. There was one small problem with it, however.

"Um, I really appreciate the thought, but regular bullets don't do anything to ghosts. You need-"

"Silver?" Kisame opened the ammo box and upended it, pouring out several rounds of bullets in strangely silvery casings. "Got it covered. I had them made special after the first incident Itachi and I had to handle, just in case."

A thump drew Neji's eyes back to Itachi, where he saw the blind man holding a silver knife against the table that he had pulled from an ankle sheath Neji could see peeking out from the bottom of his raised pant leg.

"It's good to have both a close combat weapon and one with a range," he muttered as he slid the knife across the table in Nej's direction.

Well, it wasn't what Neji had hoped to get when he'd come here, but it was better than nothing. He took the proffered weapons, then inclined his head.

"Thank you."

"I know it's not what you hoped for, but it's the best we can give you," Itachi said quietly, and Neji nodded.

"I understand. I don't like it, but I understand."

"I'll show you out," Kisame offered. At Neji's quiet noise of affirmation, Itachi sighed sadly and pulled his chair back upright to sit in it.

"You know that I'd help you if I could, but I just… _can't_." He shook his head slightly. "Please bring my brother back safely."

"I'll try my best."

Kisame took Neji by the elbow and pulled him from the room before he could say anything else. When they got to the door, he turned and stood directly in front of it, blocking Neji's path.

"Hide those somewhere on your person. Doesn't matter where, just don't make it obvious you have them. That'll make you liable to be attacked in this kind of neighborhood. People will look at it like a challenge."

Neji quickly did as Kisame bid and his the weapons, shoving the knife down his sock and the gun into the waistband of his pants. When he was done, he looked up for the man's approval, and Kisame raked him over with his gaze before glancing away.

"Rough, but it'll do. Now get out of here."

He opened the door, a clear invitation, and Neji walked through. Just before he stepped off the front step, however, Kisame caught his upper arm, holding him still, and beant down to whisper something harshly in his ear.

"Track them. I'll find you. 10 pm."

Then he door slammed shut behind Neji, cutting off any chance of further conversation. Still, a slight smile spread across his face as he quickly left the property and hauled ass down the road before anyone could spot him and come after him again. Perhaps he wouldn't be quite as alone in this journey as he had initially thought.

When he felt that he had gotten far enough away that he wouldn't be immediately stabbed if he stopped walking, Neji took a deep breath and carefully pulled the gun from his waistband, checking the surface of the barrel. It took a few minutes, but eventually he saw what he'd suspected he'd find: a small tracking device, wedged in a corner and carefully covered up with paint so it wouldn't attract attention. With a smile born of the relief of a massive amount of tension, Neji replaced the gun in his waistband and carefully felt his sock to ensure the knife was still there. Other than the phone stuffed into his pocket - which he had turned off to remove any temptation of calling for help - and the pair of sunglasses in his breast pocket, they were the only things he had with him. Kisame's last words rang in his ears again.

 _Track them. I'll find you. 10 pm._

Neji glanced at his watch. It was almost six forty. That meant he had a little over fifteen hours before Kisame would be coming for him, and he had little time to waste if he wanted to track down the wraiths' hideout before then.

Last time, he had used the private roof of the Hyuuga office to observe the trails around the city, but now that wasn't an option if he wanted to argue that he had done this completely on his own. Absentmindedly, he turned on his phone and googled what time the Empire State Building opened, then directions on the shortest route and the amount of time it would take him to walk there.

Eight am. Perfect. It would take him just about that amount of time to walk there. Neji slipped his phone back into his pocket and started walking. He had a long day ahead of him.

* * *

The drawback of using a public place like the Empire State Building instead of a private rooftop to spy on the city at large was that it was extremely hard to use his Byakugan without anyone noticing. Neji stood motionless in front of one of the large windows on the top floor, his eyes covered by his sunglasses and his hands shoved in his pockets, surveying the land and swirling auras below him with a calculating gaze.

He started from the place where Sasuke had been kidnapped and tried to work from there, tracing the trails of the wraiths through the city air. Too much time had passed between when the trail was initially laid and now, however, and the wisps of aura had dissipated into the smog. Tracking an aura on land was much easier than tracking it in air or over water because of the medium's tendency to shift. It was possible the wraiths has known this and chosen to go through the air to exploit it.

A child running to look out the window bumped into Neji, causing his concentration to falter and his eyes to return to their normal visage. The child went sprawling in front of him, and Neji took off his sunglasses and bent down to look at him.

"Are you okay?"

The child sniffled and grabbed his knee, which Neji noticed was red but not bleeding, but nodded. Even though it was technically not his fault since the child had run into him and not he other way around, Neji felt bad looking at his face trying to hold back tears, so he leaned down and pulled the little boy to his feet, then looked around for anyone who might be looking for him.

"Are you here with your family, kid? Where's your mom?"

"Jason!" A woman came flying from behind Neji and grabbed the kid, knocking Neji's supporting hands away from him as she did so. "Don't run off like that! You had me worried sick!"

The little boy, Jason, his mother had called him, took one good look at her face and started to cry. "S-sorry, Mama!" He blubbered, snot running from his nose. "I t-tr-tripped, and he h-helped me up…"

The harried woman followed the little boy's trembling finger to Neji's form, still slightly hunched from helping the child up. He quickly straightened his back and flashed the woman what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "He just bumped into me and fell down. It was no trouble."

"I… see."

The woman's face was cold, and Neji was suddenly aware of how he must look right now. He hadn't slept in the past two days other than his brief bout of unconsciousness, so his face was drawn and dark circles hovered under his eyes, his hair was a mess, and while he had gotten a change of clothes so they weren't covered in blood and other back-alley unmentionable filth, they were ill-fitting and worn. Honestly, he wouldn't trust himself in that moment, especially considering the sunglasses in his hand, and he especially wouldn't trust himself if he found himself near his child.

Picking up her son and clutching him to herself, the woman made some muttered excuse and fled back the way she had come, only pausing to throw a suspicious glance over her shoulder. Neji tried not to let it bother him too much and slipped his sunglasses back over his nose as he turned back to the large window in front of him and reactivated his eyes. He had more important things to worry about right now than if random strangers thought he looked too suspicious to be around their children.

Like the fact that he couldn't get an accurate read on the trail of the wraiths. His jaw tightening in irritation, he rotated to a new window and started searching the old-fashioned way, individually scouring every block of the city he could see from his perch to find the freshest traces of black auras. It was slow going, but he eventually found a few splashes here and there that were more recent than the spot where Sasuke had been kidnapped, making it obvious that they had flown above the city and only touched down where it was absolutely necessary. Ergo, they had realized how Neji had tracked them the first time and were now covering those tracks to the best of their ability.

Which wouldn't be enough to stump Neji for long in a normal situation, where he could go all out and let his power rip through the morning sky, but this situation was not normal so he was forced to grit his teeth and focus on scouring the whole city from his bird's eye perspective.

A hand suddenly came down on Neji's shoulder, startling him from his concentration and causing his Byakugan to drop again.

"Excuse me, sir, but I'm going to have to ask that you remove your sunglasses while inside this establishment for security purposes."

 _Damn._ Neji turned around to see a security guard standing behind him with a cross expression and a hand hovering suspiciously closely to his radio. He'd hoped that he would have a little more time before someone caught up to his deliberate disobedience of the _no hats, hoods, or sunglasses_ rule. Still, this particular security guard looked a little on the younge side and by the cut of his eyes, still hadn't lost the vivacity he'd started the job with, so he must be relatively inexperienced.

Behind the security guard, he saw the woman he'd seen earlier, still holding her son Jason against her hip and biting her lip nervously, and Neji's irritation spiked. So it had been her that had told the security guards to come after him? After he'd done nothing but pick her child off the ground after she so carelessly let him stray from her sight? Well, let that be the last time he tried to be a Good Samaritan in the middle of a mission.

Giving the security guard what he hoped was a reassuring smile - not that that trick had worked particularly well when the woman had been involved - Neji removed his sunglasses in a show of obedience. "Sorry about that, mister. I have very weak eyes, so I tend to wear them so often I forget to take them off. Is there a problem?"

"How long have you been up here on this observatory?" The guard asked, still suspicious, though looking slightly less so now that Neji had revealed his face.

After a quick glance down at his watch, Neji answered, "About… four hours now, I think. Or close to."

"Why so long?"

Now Neji cocked his head to the side in only slightly mock confusion. "Is that a problem? I was under the impression that there was no limit on the amount of time I could spend here."

The security guard faltered under Neji's gaze, showing a little bit of the inexperience he had banked on. "But it's unusual- I mean, why so long in this one spot? We can't have individuals loitering on our grounds."

"Maybe I just like the view from here," Neji said testily, inwardly cursing the woman again. Why did she have to go ruin all his hard work of finding a place he could spy from?

"R-regardless," the security guard stuttered a bit under Neji's scrutiny, "you're making some of our other patrons nervous, so I'm sorry, but I have to ask you to move along."

"Oh, I see," Neji spat. "So the money they paid is worth more than the same money I paid for this, is it?"

"W-well, sir, we have security measures for a reason, to keep everyone safe, so if you could just do as we ask, this won't have to escalate…"

The security guard continued to babble, but Neji found his gaze drawn back to the window. With a quick whisper of "Byakugan," he slipped his sunglasses back over his nose and stared out at a suspicious ariel smudge of black that had caught his attention even without his eyes activated. It darted quickly above the city, scurrying here and there as if furtively trying to avoid detection, then darted toward the ground. Apparently it was unsatisfied by what it found there, because it was back in the air soon after, making a beeline for an unmistakable monument in the distance.

Of _course_ it would be there. Because nothing can ever go wrong in a city - _any_ city - without its most famous monument being threatened.

Neji was shook from his shock over his discovery by hand of the security guard, who by this time was slightly irate, on his upper arm in a grip like a vice. "Excuse me, sir, are you even listening to me? If you don't take those off immediately, I'm going to have to escort you from the premises-"

"I get it, I'll leave," Neji interrupted tersely, shaking off the guard's grip, adding under his breath, "I got what I came here for, anyway."

Letting his power drop away from his eyes, he pulled the sunglasses from his nose and folded them up to place in his breast pocket. As he walked away from the security guard and the window, he sent the woman holding the small child a grimly annoyed smile, letting her know that he knew _exactly_ who had called the guards on him. It was petty of him, but right now he was feeling a little petty.

After all, now he had to figure out how to get across the harbor and into the Statue of Liberty tonight at ten PM with an accomplice in tow, after the last ferry had returned to the dock and the island had closed. That would be an impressive magic trick.


	32. Before The Storm

The calm is ending, and the storm is brewing! Next chapter will be the one where it all finally boils over. Thanks to my three reviewers again, and hope the suspense won't be too much for you! Enjoy this chapter and see you next week!

* * *

When Sasuke opened his eyes and found that he could see, he couldn't stop himself from feeling surprised. He'd spent so long - how long? It had felt like an eternity, though he knew it couldn't have been much longer than a few days, or even hours - alone in the maddening wraith-scented dark, bereft of his usual bodily function and senses, that the return of his sight felt alien. How did eyes work, again?

"I see you've woken," a voice said lightly next to Sasuke's ear, behind his current range of vision. "Good. You had us worried for a minute there, right lads? Oh, and Deidara."

"Fuck you, Pein," another voice outside of Sasuke's field of vision snarled.

"Now, now, Deidara. Not in front of our guest. As I was saying, you gave us quite the scare. You were supposed to wake up a while ago, but I must have given you a higher dosage of sedative than I realized. It's lucky you pulled through."

Sasuke tried to turn his head to see the owners of the voices behind him, but found that his neck wouldn't allow it. He tried to protest the lack of movement, and although he felt the words he was trying to say rumble in his throat, they refused to exit his mouth.

"Be a good boy and stay still, now," the first voice continued again, slowly moving to the edges of Sasuke's peripheral vision, then stepping in front of him so he could see the wraith's smugly smiling face above his stark white lab coat. "You don't want to struggle too much against those restraints. Those kind of knots can be rather… unforgiving."

Sasuke glanced down at himself, and screamed aloud when he saw that his entire body was tied up in a manner more befitting livestock being brought to slaughter than a human captive. Or would have screamed aloud, at least, if his mouth hadn't been mercilessly gagged with, if they hadn't removed it, which he suspected they hadn't, the same three-layer gag they'd used when they'd captured him. Jerking away from the ghost in front of him, Sasuke tried to pull against the ropes, but true to the wraith's words, the harder he yanked, the tighter the bonds became, until they were cutting painful lines into his skin. He only stopped when the ones encircling his wrists got so tight that he was worried they'd cut off the circulation to his fingers, and the one binding his neck started making it difficult to breathe.

"What did I tell you?" Pein tutted in mild concern. He waved a hand and the ropes Sasuke had inadvertently tightened loosened somewhat, though only enough that they weren't an immediate threat to his health. "Now don't try that again. I won't loosen them a second time, so next time you can just lose your fingers. Understand?"

Sasuke nodded, or tried to, at least, but his head was held upright by the bonds. Pein must have seen the acquiescence in his eyes, however, because he gave a small noise of approval and clasped his hands together in front of him.

"Good boy. Now, on to the main event. You know why we brought you here, don't you? No, don't try to answer that; I already know, and you won't be able to speak anyway. We want to know how you left your body behind and returned to it."

Sasuke fixed the wraith with the strongest glare he could muster, the silent equivalent of a hearty _fuck you_ and a spit in the eye for good measure.

Sighing, Pein waved his hand and two other wraiths appeared out from behind Sasuke. "Please, Sasuke - can I call you Sasuke? - Sasuke, we are trying to keep this civil. We only want to have a discussion with you."

At a sign from Pein, the shortest wraith - Tobi, Sasuke remembered - darted forward and gleefully ripped the duct tape off his mouth. He gave a brief howl that never made it past his throat as the adhesive tore away the barely formed hairs growing from his upper lip, and Tobi cackled in childish delight at his pain.

"I love it when they scream like that! Say, Pein, can I do that again? Can I can I can I? _Please_?"

"No, Tobi, you have to wait your turn," Pein scolded him gently.

Tobi scowled petulantly, but backed off. At the same time, a new wraith that Sasuke didn't recognize from their interactions in Konoha yanked the fabric gag from his mouth, leaving him with only the thin rope gripped between his teeth, which inhibited his ability to speak coherently, but did not make it impossible for him to speak at all.

Without thinking twice, Sasuke tried to grit out the single word that would be most useful to him in this situation. "Sharin-!"

A flaming two-by-four slammed into the back of Sasuke's head before he could finish the word, hard enough for him to see stars, though not hard enough to knock him out cold again. He gasped in stunned pain, feeling the tips of his hair start to singe before both they and the wooden board went out at the command of the same one who had lit them.

"Just you try that again," the raspy voice Sasuke had heard before purred into his ear from behind, and he felt a twinge of discomfort as a fire hot enough to cause his clothes to smoke, though not hot enough to burn him - yet - flickered down his arm from where the wraith had placed a hand on his shoulder. "I'll be waiting every time, and you can bet I won't be as careful with my little babies in the future as I was just then."

Shit. Sasuke had forgotten about the pyrokinetic wraith, Deidara. When the other two had joined Pein in his field of vision, he'd assumed that the three of them were all that were there. Now that he was thinking about it, though, hadn't there been another wraith with the group back in Konoha? Hidan, or something like that? The blond one who had a disturbing fascination with silver?

"What happened to keeping this civil?" Pein tutted again. "I can assure you, Sasuke, that the next time you try that, you'll get more than a scare. Is that clear?"

Sasuke only continued to glare at him, and Pein heaved a long-suffering sigh, as if he was dealing with a petulant child instead of a man he had kidnapped and was threatening with bodily harm.

"Now, really, Sasuke? We just want to have a nice chat about your eyes."

"Then why won't you take this out?" Sasuke spat as best he could around the cord in his mouth. It wasn't the most articulate of questions he'd ever asked, but the diction was decent enough that it could be interpreted with effort.

"Do you think we're stupid?" The newest wraith asked with an air of incredulity. "We know the kinds of things captives like you try to pull. If we took that out, you'd bite your tongue and bleed out, protecting your secrets from us forever."

Sasuke hadn't actually planned on doing that, and if he was being honest with himself, he didn't even know if he had the mental fortitude an action like that would require. He'd been trained on how to lay ghosts to rest, not how to commit suicide to protect information during an interrogation. He was just a regular person - albeit a regular person with the ability to see the spirits of the dead - not a spy. Not that they needed to know that, however.

"Now, now," Pein interjected in a mollifying tone. "There's no need to insult anyone's intelligence. It's just a precaution, Sasuke, nothing you have to worry about. You can still speak well enough, can't you?"

The garbled version of several swear words was all the answer Pein got. Heaving another sigh, the wraith tucked his hands into the pockets of the white lab coat he was wearing.

"You know, I had rather hoped we could come to an agreement of sorts, but you're being very difficult right now," he complained lightly, then strode towards Sasuke, leaning in so close that their noses almost brushed. "You know why we're doing this, right? What our end goal is?"

"You want to… be alive again," Sasuke responded stiffly through his semi-gag.

"Yes!" A hess of excitement rushed through Pein's clenched teeth, rustling Sasuke's hair with its phantom presence. "And do you know what that means?"

"That you'll be free to continue the evil deeds you committed in life again? Yeah, I'm not gonna help you with that."

"No!" Pein cuffed Sasuke upside the head and moved backwards, pacing with a steady stride several feet above the floor. "You think too shallowly! The ability, at will, to take a soul and reanimate it into another body? This is more than just a second chance at life; this means _immortality_."

Sasuke's breath caught in his throat. Immortality. Taking a single spirit and forcing it inside body after body, breaking the natural order of death and allowing such monsters as these to roam free forever.

Like Hell he'd ever be involved in something like that.

Premtively cutting off his response, Pein sent him a knowing smirk. "And who knows? Perhaps the gift can be shared, particularly with the one who helps us achieve it."

"You're mad," Sasuke spat. "Delusional. It'll never work!"

Pein's face transformed from the one of genti

* * *

le intelligence he had been wearing earlier to a thick, brutal expression that sparked fear in Sasuke's breast. "No more delusional than you if you think you can stop us from achieving our goal! I'll give you one last chance to speak reasonably: will you help us and reap the benefits for yourself, or do you insist on standing in our way?"

Despite the fear burgeoning in his stomach, Sasuke drew himself up as tall as he could in the bond's stranglehold and snarled in Pein's direction. "Go to Hell!"

Pein's expression twisted into something uglier. "We could have done this the easy way, but so be it. Next time, we won't be quite so nice. Deidara?"

"With pleasure!" The burning voice rasped in Sasuke's ear, and before he could react the burning two-by-four had smashed into the back of his skull again, this time with enough force to knock him out.

* * *

It was dark outside, though not late enough that the rest of the household had gone to bed, when Kisame carefully strapped the pistol into his side holter and covered it up with his customary black jacket. It was loaded, but he didn't bring any extra ammo because, other than the six bullets already residing inside the gun, he'd already given the only ammo that would work for this situation to that Hyuuga boy. After adjusting the jacket, he twisted in front of the mirror to ensure that the holster wasn't going to show. Satisfied, he nodded to his reflection and slipped out of his room.

Kisame had hoped that he'd be able to make it to the front door without running into anyone, but no such luck. He'd only gone a few steps down the hallway when Miru rounded the corner, her face instantly clouding in confusion as she saw his outfit.

"Going out, Boss?"

"Yeah, for a bit." He scratched the back of his head sheepishly, hoping that she wouldn't pick up on his half-truths. "I just wanted to go patrol, like the old days. See how the territory's changed for myself."

The suspicion cleared from her face, only to be replaced with worry. "It's a lot different out there than it was fifteen years ago, Boss. Maybe you should take someone with you-"

"No!" Kisame shouted, then softened his harsh reaction with a smile. "Ah, I mean, no, thank you. I want to do it by myself."

Miru's eyebrows crept up her head, but she didn't make any further protests. "Well, if that's what you want, I won't stop you. Do you at least know when you'll be back, so we can send the big guns after you if you don't show?"

"Late," Kisame admitted. "Maybe even next morning. Don't worry about me; I can take care of myself. See you tomorrow, Miru."

He brushed past her before she could say anything else, and she let out an annoyed sigh behind him as he disappeared around a corner but didn't call out after him. Kisame felt a little bad about leaving her like that, but he couldn't have her butting in to these kinds of activities, for her own safety as well as Itachi's.

Luckily, the few people he ran into after then took one look at him, nodded respectfully, and got out of his way, for which he was grateful. He appreciated his subordinates, and particularly the ones that were starting to respect him more, but he didn't want to deal with them at this exact moment.

Kisame made it out the door, closing it softly behind him and descending the first step to the ground before the next voice called out to stop him.

"So you really are going to help him, then?"

Spinning around, Kisame saw Itachi leaning against the wall beside the door with his arms folded. How he'd missed walking directly past him, Kisame didn't know, and his jaw dropped as Itachi pushed himself away from the wall and stood on the step above him, the added height for once making him taller than Kisame.

"Itachi? What…?! How- y-you?! This… this isn't what it looks like!"

"Please, spare me the theatrics, Kisame," Itachi sighed. "You should know by now that I am extraordinarily good at distinguishing when people are lying to me, especially people I know well like you."

Kisame's shoulders sank; he had no idea how he'd thought he would be able to get away with this in the first place, really. "It's exactly what it looks like."

"There; that wasn't so hard, was it?" A small smile graced Itachi's mouth as he reached forward and touched the fringe of Kisame's hair, though Kisame got the feeling it was more to cover up his fear than anything else. "You're going to be in danger, you know."

The words were said without much emotion behind them, more of a statement than a question, but Kisame could sense the undercurrent of Itachi's worry for him running beneath his voice.

"Your brother's in danger right now."

"I know." Now the distress started to show in Itachi's voice. "And if I could, I'd be after him before anyone else, no matter how bad the odds. But I can't- I can't be as selfless as that anymore, and for once in my life I want to be selfish. The Hyuuga boy can handle it, Kisame. Please don't go."

Kisame gave him a sad smile, though he knew Itachi couldn't see it. "You know I can't do that."

"Yeah, I thought you might say that." Itachi leaned forward so his forehead rested on the top of Kisame's temple. "If you didn't go after Sasuke now, you wouldn't be the same man who risked his life to break me out of a hospital, the same man I… I…"

"You what, Itachi?" Kisame asked gently.

A hand crept around to the back of Kisame's neck. "The same man I fell in love with," Itachi finished quietly, his words timid.

Kisame hummed quietly, feeling Itachi's breaths, quick from the nervousness running through his system, ghost over his cheeks. The words meant more to him than he could let Itachi know, especially at the this tender point in his recovery, but they made his heart beat faster all the same. As if Itachi could hear it, he smiled with a small measure of uncertainty.

"Please say something, Kisame…"

After swallowing past the lump in his throat, Kisame pressed a short, yet sweet kiss to Itachi's cheek. "I'll be back soon," he whispered as he pulled away and crossed the yard to the front gate. After locking the gate behind him, he turned for one last look at his friend on the front step.

Itachi's body swayed slightly forward, bereft of the support he had been using to hold himself upright. Even though the upper half of his face was covered, Kisame beheld such loneliness there and in his unclenched, searching hands that he had to avert his gaze. This wasn't the same man who had broken Fuguki's nose over an insult; this was the man he had first found in a padded white room, attached to a heart rate monitor. He turned away; he couldn't see Itachi like that.

Squaring his shoulders, Kisame unlocked the car sitting by the curb and sat down in the driver's seat. The engine purred to life under his key, and he drove away as quickly as he dared, afraid to look back and see Itachi's face again. One glimpse of his lost and lonely expression was already enough to haunt him for a lifetime.

* * *

The lights of boats and skyscrapers glittered off the water of the New York harbor. The chill of the night air curled over Neji as he sat on a bench beside the closed ferry terminal, making him shiver and pull his suit jacket tighter around himself. It reminded him, in a way, of the harbors of his home.

He still didn't know how he was going to get himself and Kisame to the island in the center of the harbor. The floodlights illuminating the Statue of Liberty shone in the distance, mocking Neji with their closeness and impossibility. Maybe Kisame had some mob friends he could call for help and get them to the island. At this point, it was looking to be their only option unless they wanted to wait for the first ferry of the morning- over ten hours from then.

Neji jumped slightly as a man wearing a black suit sat down next to him on the bench. He hissed slightly as the chill of the metal bit into his legs through his pants, then took off his hat, revealing himself to be the man Neji was waiting for.

"You find out where they're keeping him?" Kisame asked without making eye contact, his gaze fixed on the ocean as Neji's was.

"Yeah. But you're not going to like it."

"Where is it?"

Wordlessly, Neji pointed at the Statue in the middle of the harbor.

"Shit, you're serious?" At Neji's nod, Kisame swore. "How the fuck are we supposed to get out there?"

"I was hoping you might have some idea," Neji admitted. Narrowing his eyes, he murmured, "Byakugan," under his breath, then used his heightened sight to pinpoint the location of the wraith auras. "There's four of them, in the torch. Even if we could get onto the island, we wouldn't be able to make it to them. The torch hasn't been open to the public for at least fifty years."

"But you're absolutely certain that they're keeping Itachi's brother up there?" Kisame pressed.

Neji's eyes started to glow a faint silver as he concentrated harder. "The auras of people who are still alive are harder to make out than the auras of ghosts so I can't be one hundred percent sure it's him, but there is someone up there with them."

"Damn…"

The word was breathed in such a wondering tone, different from the clipped manner of talking that Kisame had used before, that Neji glanced sideways at him and got a faceful of his screaming emotions in technicolor swirls. With a silent curse, Neji let the power drop from his eyes and sent him a glare.

"Never speak of what you just saw to anyone."

"As if anyone would ever believe me." Kisame leaned forward as if to inspect Neji's face, but he flinched away before the other man could get too close. "What was that?"

There were many answers to that question, and only a few that wouldn't involve Neji breaking every secrecy law his family had. In the end, he settled on, "That is the difference between you and me."

"What lets you… you know… _see_ them?"

A curt, "Yes," was all the response Neji deigned. As if guessing correctly that that was all he was about to get out of Neji concerning his eyes, Kisame sighed and faced front again.

"So, what are we gonna do?"

Neji snorted. "I don't suppose you'd be able to call in some illegal favor or something and get us up there?"

"Unfortunately, no," Kisame laughed humorlessly. "I haven't been in the game long enough for anything of that magnitude."

"Shame."

Neji narrowed his eyes, regarding the scene in front of him. He'd had a while to sit and think over things as he'd waited for Kisame, and during that time he had come up with a few ideas to get them into the torch, but the few that were practical involved asking for help from a source he wasn't willing to ask. Which left him, predictably, in the same situation as before, only more annoyed because he had a solution, he just couldn't - or rather, wouldn't - use it.

"Maybe we could-" Kisame started, but something caught Neji's eye and he rose from the bench, lifting up a hand to shush the older man.

"Be quiet."

"What is-" Kisame began to asked, but Neji cut him off with a glare from eyes that were starting to glow again.

"I said be quiet. Something's coming."

As Neji narrowed his gaze and focused on the torch, he saw one of the auras stretch fluidly, then disgorge itself from the dark mess at the top of the Statue and shoot high into the sky. He traced its curving path through the air as it flew to a distant point in the city, then alighted on the ground.

"Did you happen to bring another weapon with you?" Neji asked without taking his eyes off the spot where the wraith had touched down.

A rustle of cloth told him that Kisame was drawing said weapon. "Yes, I have another gun, though I only have six shots worth of silver. Why?"

"Because I may have just found a way to get us where we need to go," Neji answered. "But it will be extremely dangerous, and there's no guarantee that it'll work."

"Isn't that true of anything we might try?"

Neji spared a single moment from his vigil to cast an appraising glance at his companion. "Completely true. How astute of you."

"So, what is this dangerous plan you're proposing?"

"Hmmm…" Neji withdrew his own gun from his waistband. "It will be very complicated and it's likely you won't be able to understand most of what's going on, and besides, we don't have enough time. All you need to know is that I'll be calling our enemy directly to us, and all you need to do is keep quiet and aim that gun where I tell you too. Can you trust me that much?"

He didn't look back at Kisame, though he could hear him shifting in deliberation.

"Tell me what your name is."

The request surprised Neji, though for a different reason than Kisame probably thought. They'd gotten this far without Neji's name coming up in conversation? Looking back, he didn't remember ever offering it, but that was because he'd assumed Itachi had already known it and told Kisame. Obviously that wasn't the case.

"Neji," he answered with little fanfare. "Neji Hyuuga."

"Well, then, Neji Hyuuga, you have my trust and my gun."

"Thank you." Neji took a step back. "Then stand back to back with me and point that gun ahead of you. Don't let it waver."

Kisame compiled, his broad shoulders and tall frame completely dwarfing Neji as he kept his gaze centered on the wraith, who was starting to rise from the ground once again. Neji tried not to mind too much, focusing on the weapon in his own grasp as the black aura quickly gained height and started moving towards them at a speed that would have been impressive had it not been so terrifying.

"Here it comes. Remember, don't say anything, and keep that gun up. The silver in that thing will be the only thing keeping it in your hands."

That was all the warning Neji gave Kisame before the wraith hurtled over the top of their heads, many thousands of feet up, and Neji sent a blast of power radiating out around him, hoping to catch his attention.

"Byakugan!"

For a single, heart-stopping second, Neji thought his plan hadn't worked, then the wraith made a sudden loop in the air and darted down directly in front of him. The darkness fell away from his body, revealing the child wraith Neji recognized from their fight in Konoha, the one who had like to play with sharpened jacks. He scowled petulantly at Neji, but completely ignored his companion.

"Oh, it's you. I thought Pein killed you dead enough last time, but I guess he didn't do a good enough job."

"Maybe you should bring me to him so he can finish the job," Neji offered.

Behind him, Kisame stiffened at his words, obviously realizing that the comment hadn't been directed at him and that there must be someone else with them. A shiver went down his spine, passing to Neji through their shared contact.

The child - wasn't his name Tobi, or something of the like? - tilted his head to the side in consideration. "I don't think he'd like that," he finally said, and Neji's hopes plummeted. "See, I don't think you matter enough that he'd care if he didn't kill you dead enough. I can ask him, though!"

With a flash of dark aura, Tobi skipped back into the sky and darted towards the other wraiths in the torch. His presence disappearing gave Neji a chance to catch his breath, though he knew that it wouldn't be long before either he, or something worse, returned for the two of them.

He had barely managed to relay all of that to Kisame before the auras in the Statue started to boil and the darkness spilled over the base of the torch, dripping down towards the water like sparks from a black flame. A single aura, larger and more powerful than Tobi's, surged out of the top, pausing in the air as if to search for something before darting directly towards Neji. It landed only a few scant feet away from him, reforming into a sight that gave him chills: Pein, leader of the Akatsuki and the same ghost who had ruthlessly threatened to slit his throat - from the inside, no less.

"Well, well, well…" He smiled in delight, no trace of coldness in his face or voice, which only served to make him more terrifying. "And here I thought I'd gotten rid of you for good."

"It takes a bit more than a few cuts and a dose of sedatives to keep me down for long," Neji snapped, trying to cover up the tremble in his voice with anger.

Pein waved away the attempt at bravado. "Not what I meant. If I'd wanted you dead back then, I would have made sure you were dead. I thought you'd never be able to face us again."

The matter-of-fact way he said it was worse than if he'd been threatening Neji. Behind him, he felt Kisame shiver again, but luckily he made no noise.

"I must say, I'm impressed you managed to track us this far," Pein continued as if they were discussing tea brands instead of vicious attacks and kidnappings. "I thought we'd be far out of your range that you wouldn't be able to tell, but one of us must have been sloppy coming back. My bet is on Tobi. He can be such a child sometimes, quite a handful. Still, a child's enthusiasm can be useful sometimes, hm, Neji?"

"Let Sasuke go!" Neji demanded, holding up his gun so it was pointed at Pein's face.

But the wraith only chuckled, raising his hands a few inches into the air more as a mockery than an actual sign of submission. "Now, really, Neji my boy? We were having such a nice conversation, and then you had to go and drag that unseemly weapon into it."

But Neji only focused his aim harder. "I said, let him go!"

"Neji, I think we both know that isn't going to happen, so why don't you just put your gun away and give up? Sasuke belongs to us now."

"Only physically."

Now a gleam of something hard stated to show in Pein's eyes. "For the moment, yes, but it won't be long before he belongs to us body, mind, and soul. You shouldn't underestimate our capabilities."

"And you shouldn't underestimate the fact that Sasuke's already broken out of your hold once before," Neji retorted. "What's stopping him from doing so again?"

"You," Pein enunciated very clearly, "are starting to try my patience, boy. Begone before I decide against letting you live a second time."

"Take us to see him, at least!"

"Take you… to see him?" The eyebrows crawled up Pein's forehead. "Directly into the den of the enemy? You're more suicidal than I gave you credit for."

Neji kept quiet, watching the gears turn behind Pein's soulless eyes. Right now, Neji knew, he would be considering whether Neji's request was part of a plan, or just a bluff to throw him off his game. Allowing an armed assassin into their headquarters was suicide, but capturing one and holding him there was advantageous. Which situation, though, was this? A plan, or a bluff?

Luckily it didn't matter to Neji which way Pein decided, because the proposition was both a plan and a bluff. Or rather, a planned bluff.

Pein crossed his arms over his chest in deliberation, completely ignoring the gun still pointed at him. Finally, he sighed. "Our little key did show substantial distress at the thought of you being injured. If nothing else, we could use you as a punching bag and see if it makes him succumb faster. Fine; I'll take you with me to see him."

"Both of us," Neji quickly added. Kisame twitched at his mention.

But Pein only frowned, looking around at their empty surroundings. "You and who else?"

"My companion," Neji stressed, jerking his head at the man standing with his back pressed to Neji's own.

For a few seconds, Pein stared at him in unblinking silence, then he burst out laughing. "You can't be serious!" He gasped, clutching his chest as if the mirth caused him physical agony. "He can't even see me! He's useless!"

Fixing Pein with a glare, Neji muttered out of the side of his mouth, "Seven o'clock, Kisame."

 _Bang_.

Before Neji could react, Kisame had aimed in the direction Neji had pointed him in and fired off a round. The harsh sound cracked through the chill air coming off the harbor, and the bullet found a resting place in the post of a nearby street lamp. Even Pein looked surprised at the speed with which Kisame attacked, floating several feet to the side of where he had been before as if he'd instinctually moved at the sight of the gun aiming at him. If he hadn't moved, the bullet currently residing in the lamp post would have punched a hole straight through his gut.

The surprise on Pein's face quickly morphed again, and he laughed even harder than before. "I can see I misjudged your companion. But now that I've seen that, why would I ever want to bring him along?"

"It never hurts to have a little extra insurance," Neji said in a flat voice, though he purposefully didn't specify whether Kisame would be better insurance for himself or for Pein.

It seemed like the wraith bought it, though, and Pein shook his head, smirking. "Congratulations, Neji: you just bought yourself two one-way tickets to Hell. Let me go get your bus."

With that, he jumped into the sky and streaked away to the torch. Neji found himself relaxing a bit at his presence being gone, and Kisame picked up on it through the tension draining out of his back.

"Is he gone?"

"Yes, but he'll be back soon, or someone else will," Neji whispered back.

"Then I take it I didn't hit him?"

Neji grimaced. "No, sorry, though you came very close. He dodged."

"Shame. But I hope something good came of that conversation, at least."

"I think so." Neji paused for a moment as the enormity of what he'd just bartered for sunk in. "They're going to let us in themselves."

"Let us in?!" Kisame let out an impressed whistle. "How'd you manage to do that?"

"...You're not going to like it."

"Tell me anyway."

Neji took a deep breath. "By promising that they could torture us in front of Sasuke so they could try to get some information out of him."

There was a long pause as Kisame digested this. Neji thought he would be angry at the prospect, but eventually he felt the other man's head nod.

"It's a good plan to get us in there. Now the goal is to either get Sasuke out of there or drive the ghosts off before we get tortured too hard, is that it?"

Letting out a light breath of relief that he hadn't been upset, Neji nodded in response. In the distance, he saw a different aura pull itself away from the torch, this time with something in tow. "Something's coming. Just follow my lead and don't say anything."

The warning came just before a small platform made of crudely nailed-together boards slammed into the ground directly in front of him, and both Neji and his companion jumped, though Kisame, true to his instructions, stayed silent. The platform was soon followed by the descent of a wraith, the new one Neji recognized from Sasuke's abduction but not from the fight in Konoha. The ghost glanced over them with a disinterested gaze before gesturing to the platform.

"Get on. I won't ask twice."

Neji hesitated; it didn't look at all safe, but he didn't want to disobey and risk their ride abandoning them, so he slowly broke formation with Kisame and walked to the platform, ascending onto it with a nervous step. Kisame wasn't far behind, and when the two of them stood on the platform, the wraith waved his hand and Neji felt it begin to shift under his feet.

"One more thing."

When Neji looked up into the face of the wraith, his previously dull expression was full of glee, though not a very pleasant kind of glee.

"My job is to transport that thing, not you two. If you fall, you die."

Neji dropped to his knees in terror and grabbed at the edge of the platform, vaguely aware of Kisame doing the same thing next to him, though with considerably less urgency. He only had time to gasp out a single command to the man next to him before both the wraith and the platform took off into the night sky over the harbor at speeds approaching that of a bullet from a gun.

"Hold on!"


	33. Pain, Pein

Neji was beginning to regret his plan by the time the platform landed and he was left with the distinct feeling that he'd let his stomach somewhere on the opposite shore. Luckily, neither he nor Kisame had let go during the ride, and they both tumbled to the floor with their respective weapons in their hands as the platform jerked out from underneath them. He made as if to stand, but a sudden burst of fire above his head kept him from rising too far.

"Stay down, filthy human, or I'll roast you like the pig you are!"

Neji recognized that voice- it was one of Pein's subordinates, the pyrokinetic wraith Deidara. Carefully keeping his head close to the ground to evade any potential bursts of flame, he glanced up with only his eyes to gauge their surroundings.

They were on a catwalk that surrounded the burnished flame and close enough to touch it. The catwalk had an ornate handrail that seemed to cup the flame from a distance, housing the many floodlights that gave the torch its glow and giving Neji the feeling that he was standing on the cusp of the flame itself. The wraith who had brought them over from the mainland was still floating several feet above the surface they were kneeling on, arms folded across his chest and expression stony, and on the other side, Deidara was grinning at him with an expression housing a little bit too much glee for Neji's comfort, holding a - was that a flaming two-by-four?

"Pein wants them inside," the new wraith said calmly, his expression never changing.

Deidara kicked at the nearest illuminating floodlight. It briefly flared brighter, as if the wires inside had caught fire, before burning out entirely. "But who's to say that they didn't just fall to their deaths into the ocean, huh. Kakuzu? After all, it was a terribly dangerous trip. All that had to happen was a single wobble and poof! No more annoying humans."

The wraith, who Neji assumed was named Kakuzu, only blinked. "Pein wants them inside. I brought them. If they fell, that would be their own faults, but I will not deliberately go against what he asks."

"Spoilsport."

Throughout this exchange, Neji could sense the presence of two more wraiths and a human-shaped void of vague aura, but couldn't tell where they were exactly without turning on his Byakugan, an action he wasn't willing to take for fear of losing his head in the manner threatened before. Crawling to his knees but careful to keep his head below the line where Deidara had cast his flame before, Neji gave his surroundings a more thorough examination, but saw no sign of them, or even a door leading into the torch, where Sasuke was likely being housed.

A sudden blade of wind sliced through the catwalk, causing the fire on Deidara's flaming board to flare up and leaving Neji breathless with its chill. His hair, which had escaped from the tie he had used to keep it constrained somewhere along the ride to the top of the statue, whipped about his head, and he desperately fought to contain it again without dropping his gun. Long hair, he noted with a disparaging mental chuckle, was not the most ideal style to have when fighting fire. All it would take was one spark in the right place at the wrong time and his entire head would be alight.

As if sensing the direction Neji's thoughts had taken, the pyrokinetic wraith let out a cackle and let the flaming two-by-four, which was being held aloft by telekinesis instead of hands, drop a few inches closer to his scalp.

"Something bothering you, pretty boy? Got your _feathers ruffled_?"

Neji managed to contain his hair except for a few shorter strands that stubbornly refused to stop whipping about his head, then glared up at the wraith. "Where is Sasuke? Bring us to him!"

All of a sudden, the flaming two-by-four was right underneath Neji's chin, the sparks popping dangerously close to the skin of his neck. He noticed, with a kind of abstract clarity that stemmed from his subconscious as his rational mind and body froze in fear, that the wood was burning but not charring, the flames seemingly fed by pure energy instead of the chemical process of combustion.

"Now, you listen here," the pyrokinetic wraith drawled with a dark glare. "You don't get to make the demands here! We're in charge, and-!"

"Stop threatening him and show him the trapdoor," Kakuzu broke in disinterestedly, causing Deidara to choke off with a newly targeted glare.

After a few seconds of a stalemate, Deidara blew out a puff of air that sparked a bit at the edges, then pulled the board away from Neji and used it to pry open a trapdoor Neji hadn't noticed before. "There. Happy?"

"I would be if you paid me," the new wraith muttered just low enough for Neji to be unsure if he'd heard him correctly or not. Uncertain of whether that meant Deidara had officially backed down or not, Neji decided to try and get a little further upright, and when no blade of flame came racing forward to either decapitate him or set his hair ablaze, he straightened up fully.

"Is Pein down there? I want to speak with him."

"As if you're worthy of seeing our glorious leader on equal footing, you filthy-" The pyrokinetic wraith started again, but cut off at a particularly large gust of wind that had the peculiar consequence of whipping the flames almost out, instead of fanning them higher. Grimacing, Deidara decided to finish the sentence alternatively. "I mean, fuckin' knock yourself out. Yeah, Pein's down there, your stubborn little friend's down there, pretty soon you'll be down there and it'll all be one big fuckin' party. Woohoo."

Neji advanced on the trapdoor and looked down it suspiciously. It didn't appear to hold any more traps other than the space itself, cramped and unsuitable for shooting due to the potential for friendly fire caused by ricocheting bullets; his eyes, as he leaked just a tiny amount of power into them, not enough to alert the wraiths of what he was doing but enough to do a little snooping, confirmed as much, as well as the fact that Pein and Tobi's auras were somewhere at the end of the tunnel. It led straight down with a ladder for the first few feet before leveling out into a very steep set of stairs at a sharp angle that he couldn't see the end of, then he assumed into another ladder based of the position of the wraith auras below them- either that, or a spiral staircase.

Glancing at both of the wraiths one final time to ensure that they were only guarding him and his companion from attacking, not attacking themselves, Neji motioned Kisame closer. When he was within arm's reach, Neji held out the gun to him, handle first.

"Switch with me."

"Why?" Kisame asked, a little louder than he should have given their audience, but Neji could understand that considering the panic frantically floundering behind his gaze.

Leaning forward so the wraiths couldn't overhear his words, Neji answered, "Because mine has more shots left then yours."

For a few agonizing seconds, incomprehension swirled in Kisame's eyes, then something clicked and a look of understanding crossed his face. "Oh! Ah, sure."

He held his gun out and Neji grasped it, careful not to let go of his own until Kisame's hand had firmly taken ahold of it. The new gun, minus one bullet, he considered for a few seconds, hefting the weight in his hand before deciding it was too much for him to hold safely while descending the ladder. He pulled the side of his jacket back and was about to stuff the pistol into his waistband when a shout and a hand of his wrist stopped him.

"What are you doing?!"

Neji lifted his gaze to see panic on Kisame face as he held his wrist. "We have to go down a ladder," he said by way of explanation, but Kisame still shook his head back and forth frantically.

"But- but you said not to let go of it! That these were our only lifelines! You can't just- put it somewhere you can't use it!"

After casting a pointed glance down at Kisame's hand on his wrist, which made the older man instantly whip it away, Neji pointedly slipped the gun into his waistband and leaned down to pull the silver knife Itachi had given to him out of his sock.

"The space we have to go down into is too narrow to safely use a gun. Too big of a chance for ricochets. A close-reach weapon like this will work better, and I can't go down that ladder carrying it anyway. That's why I'll be going first, and you'll follow me with the gun pointed straight up, so if you have to shoot, it won't hit the walls. Got it?"

For a moment, Kisame blinked, unsure, then his gaze hardened into a confidence that was more stubbornness than bravery. "Y-yes. I can do that."

"Good."

Neji turned back to the hole in the ground and got on his knees in preparation for lowering himself into the maw of the cavern below. Kisame really was holding up well, he mused as he glanced upwards at the other man, kicking his feet over the edge as he did so. A weaker man might have run away screaming now- even off the top of the Statue itself.

When Neji had his lower half down ladder through the trapdoor, Kisame joined him at his level by squatting down. "You sure about this?"

"Absolutely not." Neji gave him a thin-lipped smile. "But it's our only option at this point."

With that, he placed the blade of the knife in his teeth and concentrated on lowering himself fully into the hole, going hand over hand backwards until there was enough room for Kisame to join him in the descent. Neji heard some mutterings with an undercurrent of panic running through them, mostly based around how fucking insane this was and how sure Kisame was that he was actually dreaming because yes, he'd expected some crazy shit, but this tops anything he ever thought he'd find, but as soon as Neji was far enough down, he swung himself over the edge and began to make his way down as well, a task that was made far moure difficult for him than it was for Neji since he had to keep the gun pointed above them and could only hold on with one hand at a time.

About five rungs down, Kisame narrowly missed treading on Neji's fingers, and he hissed in displeasure.

"Sorry about that," Kisame called down to him, and Neji grunted around the blade in his mouth in response.

"'S finge."

A few more rungs after that, and Kisame really did catch Neji's finger under his shoe, extracting a thin howl from his throat. Luckily, he hadn't put his whole weight on the finger and Neji quickly extracted it. In the face of Kisame's fervent apologies, Neji just grunted and started moving down the ladder at a faster pace.

This was going to be a long descent.

* * *

There was no physical sign of Pein or Tobi when Neji and Kisame finally reached a spot in the elbow of the Statue that allowed them to walk around comfortably, though, when Neji's eyes adjusted to the dark, he could make out the form of Sasuke in the opposite corner, restrained and tied the scaffolding of the Statue itself. As soon as Kisame spotted him, he started to move towards him, but Neji flung an arm out to stop him.

"Stop! Don't you remember where we are? This is definitely a trap."

"I thought this whole thing was already a trap," Kisame murmured back, casting a quick glance around in false hopes to pick up something his eyes couldn't see.

"Exactly, Kisame."

Neji swiftly exchanged the blade in his hand for the gun again, shoving the knife down into his sock as he pulled his other weapon free. When he had it safely in his sweaty grasp again, his up-tempo heartbeat slowed a bit, but only slightly. It ratcheted back up to its previous level, however, at the appearance of Deidara's flaming two-by-four, which flung itself down the hole in the ceiling they had just clambered out of and hovered in the center of the room. The pyrokinetic wraith's rasky laugh echoed through the small chamber from the ladder tunnel, followed by an indullgent chuckle emanating from behind them that had Neji's blood running cold through his veins.

"Now, really, Deidara, must you show off so much? You're almost as bad as Tobi!"

The child wraith floated up through floor next to Sasuke's immobilized form with a petulant expression on his face. A tiny red matchbox car and a green tractor figurine with _John Deere_ painted on the side circled his head idly. "I'm not a baby, Pein! I bet I killed more people than stupid Deidara, dead or alive! Plus, my toys are better than any fire."

The board suddenly whooshed to life in an inferno, and Deidara spun down through the ceiling, fire trailing from the tips of the hair fanning out in his wake. "Say that again, you fucking punk! I'll roast you alive! I'll-!"

Kakuzu appeared from behind Deidara and cuffed the flaming pyromaniac. "Cut it out, both of you. We have guests."

Pein hummed in appreciation. "Yes, quite. Do be polite, lads- and Deidara-"

"Fucking fuck fuck you, Pein!"

"-We are entertaining company, after all."

Closing his eyes to disguise the power he was drawing upon, Neji gave a brief peek at his surroundings. There were four wraiths within a mile of him, and all four of those wraiths were in that small chamber. Neji had to say that he was surprised; he'd expected that there'd be more, or at least that Pein would hold a few in reserve, just in case. Did that mean that they were hiding outside the boundaries of his perception? Or was this all there was?

Dropping his power, Neji opened his eyes and turned slightly so he could see the mild expression on Pein's face behind him. "Is this all of you?" He jeered, hoping his voice wouldn't betray him with a crack. "I thought there were more last time, but maybe you've just gotten weaker."

A dark look dared across Pein's face, and Neji knew he'd hit a nerve. "Don't mock us about that," he said, keeping his voice light, though Neji detected a hint of a snarl underneath. "You know as well as I do that these are our full number. Don't think we don't know what you and your partner have been up to."

Neji blinked in surprise. "Huh? What are you talking about?" This was really it? They only had four opponents? Granted, pitting himself and a blind shot against four wraiths wasn't Neji's ideal odds, but it was a lot better than he had been expecting.

"The way you've been sneaking around and getting in our way! You've been stealing our prey for days now!" Pein hissed. "Every time we get close to recruiting a ghost, we come back to find him assassinated! We haven't had a successful recruitment since Kakuzu! You cannot tell me you had no part in this!"

Unfortunately, that was exactly what Neji could tell him. There was someone going around murmuring ghosts? And underground wraiths, or ghosts with wraith potential, at that? What was going on here? His confusion must have shown on his face, for Pein allowed a flicker of surprise to cross his.

"So it wasn't you? I could have sworn… well, no matter. We have more than enough power to crush you now. Submit, and we will only tortue to the brink of your sanity and as long as your body can stand. Resist, and we will see how far we can push those boundaries before you snap."

"Yeah, like _that_ pep talk was very convincing," Neji snapped as his mind ran in circles. So there was someone out there hunting ghosts? Did that mean they were on his side, or were they another party altogether? How should they best act now? Would it be better to try and isolate the wraiths, pick them off one by one, or to attack them all at once? Or, should they try and find out who this unlikely helper might be?

And dammit, he was starting to sound like as much of an immature brat as Sasuke was.

Kakuzu bristled and stepped forward. "Do not speak to our Leader that way-!"

Pein cut him off with a wave of his hand. "Oh, do relax, Kakuzu. This isn't some corrupt Wall Street office where you have to kiss your boss's ass to get ahead."

Kakuzu faded backwards, but fixed Neji with a glower from the shadows. Shifting a little nervously, Neji glanced behind him at Sasuke's motionless form before looking back to Pein. "What have you done to Sasuke? Why isn't he waking up?"

"He's just asleep for the moment." Pein flapped a hand in the air dismissively. "You don't need to worry about him. I'm sure the sounds of your screams will wake him up right away."

A whine suddenly caught Neji's attention as it raced towards him, and he glanced to the side just in time to see the red matchbox car screech to a halt in the air a scant inch away from his temple, its wheels spinning menacingly in the air. From across the room, Neji heard Tobi giggle.

"I can make them scream, Pein! Please let me do it! Please!"

"Not now, Tobi. If we let you play with them, it'll be over too quickly. Let the others have some fun too, alright?"

Tobi pouted, but aquessed to Pein's demand. From the other parts of the room, Deidara and Kakuzu started to advance upon them menacingly, and despite Kisame's back pressing quickly into his own, Neji felt a tremor go down the arm holding his gun aloft. The negotiations were over; he had no time left for second-guessing himself. The time to act was now.

"Say, Pein, how often do the guards come patrol this area?" Neji asked suddenly, his eyes sweeping their surroundings and calculating approximate distances as quickly and subtly as he was able. "There must be people that can hear a scream from this place, even if its been closed to the public for a long time. Aren't you afraid that someone might call the police? After all, wouldn't anybody be suspicious if they heard someone screaming from here at-" he gave a quick glance in Kisame's direction "- _three o'clock_ in the morning?"

Pein let out a scathing laugh. "As if we'd be afraid of mortal law enforcement! Besides, it's only…" his eyes narrowed as he caught ahold of the tail end of the meaning behind Neji's words. "It's only eleven…"

 _Ba-bang!_

A gunshot echoed sharply in the small space as Neji felt the pistol kick in his hands. His aim had been good, but he knew it hadn't connected when he saw that Pein had shifted his body effortlessly to the side and out of the trajectory of the bullet, exactly as he had done before. A smug smile decorated his face and he laughed cruelly.

"Did you honestly think that trick was going to work twice, Neji? You're more boring than I thought! At least come up with some creative…" A thin line of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and dribbled down onto his white lab coat, staining it red. "What- what is this? I've never… never felt anything like this before…"

Neji looked down at the floor beneath Pein's feet, the same space away from where he'd been initially standing as when he'd dodged the bullet earlier, as Neji had suspected. Meaning, Neji's bullet had missed, but the one Kisame had fired had hit.

Unable to resist, Neji allowed his lips to pull into a triumphant grin. "That is pain, Pein. Enjoy it- while it lasts."


	34. The Wraith's Code

Something was wrong in the air; Shikamaru could sense it. It was like a cry of pain released into the unforgiving darkness had engulfed the whole city, radiating out into the spectral plane with an intensity that bordered on ferocious. For a moment, Shikamaru wondered if it was an explosion or other attack of the same kind on a crowded city street, ending dozens of lives at once and leaving the echoes of their spirits to torment those who were already dead.

But no, that wasn't quite right. The pained wail came from inside the spectral plane, not pressed in from the outside. Shikamaru listened harder, and then his eyes widened as he realized what it was.

It was one of the wraiths from before, screaming out in agony. Huh. He'd never heard a ghost of that high a level in that much pain before. That was new.

Wait. His eyes narrowed. That meant that someone was killing ghosts without him. _He_ was the one who was cleaning up the streets in this city; _he_ was the one with a mission. It was _his_ duty to eliminate the darker scum. How dare someone else steal his job!

With a dark scowl on his face, Shikamaru rose into the air and scented aura of the city for the direction where the screams were coming from. He had someone to teach a lesson to.

* * *

The scream of pain that ripped from the wraith who had been shot echoed through the spectral plane with enough strength to rattle the walls in the physical one so that even Kisame noticed the sound.

"Did we get him?!"

Neji didn't respond; he knew that their window of having the surprise advantage was growing smaller by the second, so when Pain doubled over with an incredulous expression on his face he took the opportunity and fired a second round.

The bullet never hit home. It was intercepted at the last second by the flaming board Deidara was wielding telepathically, then then board lowered itself. A hiss from behind Neji slunk into his ear as the flames on the board rose up higher and tangled with the bottom of Pein's lab coat.

"Do not interfere, filthy human! We fulfill our code ourselves."

"Yes, our code. We shall fulfill it."

Neji hadn't noticed the second wraith stepping up beside the first, and he shivered as the toy tractor and matchbox car flew to circle Tobi's head menacingly. The sound their tiny wheels made while moving at a speed they weren't designed to go sent a thrill of terror down his spine. How could it be that a child's toy was capable of reducing him to such a nervous mess?

Even Kisame reacted to the appearance of the two toys and the flaming board, jumping as it hit the floor with a quiet thud. "Neji, what do we-?"

"Get down!" In one swift movement, Neji grabbed Kisame's arm, pulling him backwards to where Sasuke was affixed to the support beams, and yanked him to the floor. Part of him was surprised that he'd been able to manhandle the much larger man so easily, but he supposed the adrenaline rushing through his system with his pounding heart rate had given him the strength.

Cocking his head to the side in confusion, Kakuzu asked, "Code? What code are we fulfilling?"

Deidara turned to him, licking dark lips with a freakishly long tongue and eyes blazing a devilish shade of red. "That's right; you're pretty new to our organization. You haven't gone through our full initiation yet. Ya see, we here have a kind of promise that we're the best and strongest around, and to prove that, we get to-"

"We gets to kill you if you screw up and get huuuurrrrt!" Tobi sang gleefully, clapping his hands and dancing around Pein's doubled over body. He tried to straighten up, but gasped and fell to his knees instead, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.

"G-guys, you c-can't… you can't be s-serious…" Pein tried to laugh weakly, but it came out more as a croak. The front of his lab coat was starting to seep through with spectral blood, and a few drops of it even hit the ground, staining it with rapidly evaporating evidence of the spiritual plane that even Kisame should have been able to see.

"Is that…"

"No talking. Quick." Neji shoved his gun into Kisame's free hand. "Shoot at them while I get Sasuke loose."

"But where-?"

"Eleven to two! Just try to injure another one of them while they're still distracted!"

"O-okay! But for the record, I still have no idea what's going on!"

"It's probably for the best that you don't."

The first shot rang out as Neji grabbed the knife from his sock, intending to cut the ropes that bound Sasuke and lower him to the floor. The harder he looked at them, however, the more complex they became, and he was worried that if he cut them in the wrong order, the way the knots were designed would cause the other loops to tighten dangerous, cutting off circulation to limbs, or worse. After casting a quick glance behind him to see that Deidara had fended off the shot by lifting the flaming board to block the bullet's path but Kisame was undeterred, firing both guns at the same time and at different locations to increase the difficulty of Deidara blocking them, Neji finally decided that the gag tied around Sasuke's mouth was as good a place to start with as any, considering it wasn't attached to anything else.

The blade of the knife slit the fabric easily, and Neji quickly ripped it off Sasuke's face, feeling his skin. This wasn't good; his forehead was hot. He likely had a fever. With a sudden sinking suspicion, Neji pulled Sasuke's mouth open to see that it was dry and his tongue was swollen and covered in a layer of white. Red crept at the edges of Neji's vision; it was now over twenty-four hours since Sasuke had been captured, and they hadn't given him any water during that time?

Pulling his anger back in, Neji patted Sasuke's face several time. "Sasuke? Sasuke, can you hear me? Sasuke!"

There was no response, not that Neji had expected one, if he was being completely honest with himself. Grimacing, Neji went about slashing the other bonds as quickly as possible to prevent the loops around his extremities from tightening dangerously and cutting off his circulation. If at all possible, he wanted to make it back from this mission with Sasuke both alive and still in one piece.

When the last rope came loose and Sasuke slipped downwards, Neji caught him in his arms, dropping the knife in the process, and glanced back up at the action on the other side of the room. Deidara had finally abandoned clocking the bullets in favor of lighting Pein's lab coat on fire, the flames vicious devouring him in a matter of seconds before there was nothing left. Neji had to blink at the speed with which he disappeared; was that really the end of their tormentor, the mastermind behind this whole plan?

Of course, there was no way of knowing if that was a blessing or a curse in disguise. True, the mastermind was gone, but he had also been the only one able to hold back the rabid dogs he had called companions. With them now free of their bonds of loyalty, there was no telling what they might do.

Now that Deidara was no longer blocking the bullets, however, that left the other two wraiths vulnerable to attack. As if sensing the drop in defenses, Kisame fired three quick rapports into the center of the group, by accident aiming directly for Tobi's head. The first two of the bullets Tobi managed to block with his cars, the toys exploding into a thousand shattered pieces of plastic in the air, but the third slammed directly into his forehead. As he was knocked to the ground by the force of the blow, Neji suddenly realized that in that moment, there was fear on the young wraith's face, the first time he'd seen the emotion there, and it made him look suddenly small.

All of a sudden, his body was wrenched into the air by an invisible force, the gaping void that was once the back of his skull dripping blood that fizzled out before it hit the floor. Behind his kicking legs, Kakuzu stood with one arm raised, a look of concentration on his face.

"That code applies to all of us, correct?"

A feral grin split Deidara's face. "Absolutely!"

"Excellent." Slowly, Kakuzu closed his hand into a fist, and Tobi started scrabbling at his neck at the same time.

"How many shots do you have left?" Neji hissed to Kisame, who had lowered the guns.

"I'm all out," he whispered back, shifting his gaze back and forth between Neji and what was to him a empty space filled with flames and rushing wind as if unsure where his attention would be most beneficial.

"Damn," Neji cursed under his breath, then reached into his breast pocket for the extra stash of ammo Kisame had given him earlier. "You know how to refill those things, right?" At Kisame's nod, he pulled the bigger man behind him and shoved the box of ammunition into his hands. "Switch with me and fill them back up then. I'll cover. And try to wake Sasuke up while you're at it, if you can."

As Kisame began his task, his hands shook a little and spilled the ammunition on the floor, slowing down what Neji assumed to be a practiced motion to the speed of an unsure kindergartener writing his name for the first time. Neji turned his back forcibly on Sasuke's body on the floor, his chest rising and falling in increments too far apart for comfort, to pick up the knife he'd dropped earlier and hold it up at chest height. Across the room, Tobi looked like he was screaming if he could possibly get his lungs to inflate, but the invisible grip of Kakuzu's wind-hand kept him a silent as if he'd already been dead. The flesh of his neck grew red and raw, as if rubbed by a hangman's noose, then began to ooze spectral blood before bending at an inhuman angle with a shark _crack!_ Neji barely had time to catch the terrified pain in Tobi's eyes before they went lifeless and his tiny body disappeared in the implosion of a black hole.

Raucous laughter filled the air, and Neji saw Deidara double over, hands clutching desperately at his torso as if that was the only thing keeping them intact. "Great shot, Kakuzu! That was fantastic! We oughta work together more often. I really think our styles complement each other."

Kakuzu gifted the pyrokinetic wraith with a thin-lipped grin. "I would tend to agree." He made a swirling motion with one hand, and the flames still leaking out from Deidara's board stuttered into full life again, swirling up in the shape of a tornado.

"Woohoo! That's what I'm talking about! Say, now that Pein's gone, you wanna form a partnership, just the two of us?"

A frown replaced the smile on Kakuzu's face. "I don't know. I really didn't want to even join this group, but… well, I suppose you were 'recruited' in the same fashion. All I want is money, material wealth, and all you lot seemed to be obsessed with the coming back to life thing…"

"Yeah, but here's the deal." Deidara leaned toward Kakuzu and lowered his voice conspiratorially. "None of us really wanted that except Pein. He was just finishing someone else's goal, is all, someone who was too weak and failed before he could get his prize. But us, we're both men of simple wants. You just want to take, and I just want to burn. There's no reason those things should be mutually exclusive, right?"

"I… see."

Neji saw, too, and horror churned in his gut at the thought. The wraiths were bad when they had had a leader, someone to reign them back when they went too far and focus them on a goal instead of indiscriminate destruction, but this was a recipe for disaster greater than what Pein had ever wrought. He glanced behind himself to check on Kisame's situation - he still hadn't loaded the second gun, but the first was sitting on the ground, ready to go - before gritting his teeth and taking a step forward.

Usually, the best choice of action in this type of situation, now that the hostage had been safely recaptured, would be to either call for backup - man, Neji was getting extraordinarily pissed that that was taken off his list of options - or try to escape on their own. Seeing as they were inside a giant statue hundreds of feet off the ground and on an island (x miles?) away from shore, that wasn't an option either, so Neji had to go with the next best option, which was actually the worst one: fight off two crazy, hellishly powerful wraiths with abilities that went outside what he was trained against.

It was going to suck if they'd come this far, only to die now.

Neji snatched the loaded gun from the ground and pelted towards the two wraiths, who were just sticking out their hands to shake on a deal. It appeared like they'd forgotten the humans were still in there with them, because Neji got close enough that he could rear back and aim a knife thrust at Deidara's neck before shock entered their faces and Kakuzu whipped a blast of air at him that sent him careening back into the wall.

That hurt. Blinking back tears at the sudden pain - was that his ribs? He hoped they were only bruised and not fractured - Neji fumbled the gun and fired a wild shot at the two wraiths. It missed, but only because Kakuzu leaned out of the way and sent it spinning up towards the ceiling with a blast of air instead.

"It's those rodents," he said with an impossibly frigid glare, as if he was staring down at a piece of dog shit that had done the unthinkable and dared to place itself in such a position that it might get on the bottom of his shoe.

"I almost forgot they were there," Deidara agreed, turning to send a flaming glare at Neji. "Shall we test out the limits of our new partnership on them? What say you?"

The flaming board rose into the air, and all of a sudden ropes of fire sheared off from it in thick sheets. "It would be my pleasure."

"Kisame, how's that second gun coming!" Neji yelled in a panic without taking his eyes off his opponents.

"Done!"

"Good!" In the face of the approaching wraiths, Neji emptied the clip of bullets - none of which hit their target, but did have the intended effect of keeping them at bay a little longer - and used the moment of distraction he had created to run back to Kisame and the unconscious Sasuke laying in the floor. "Switch with me!"

"Guns?"

"No, places!" Neji pulled Kisame up and pointed him where the wraiths were encroaching on them, albeit a little more cautiously. "Shoot there! Once every ten to fifteen seconds or so- not too much, just to keep them at bay!"

Panic seeped into Kisame's face at the sound of Neji's normally calm voice, cracked under the pressure of the circumstances. "But what would that do-? Why aren't we trying to hurt them?!"

"Because we can't like this!" Neji grabbed Kisame and swung him around, pointing his gun arm himself. "There! They aren't like the other ones- they can use unlimited long range attacks. The only hope we have now is Sasuke waking up and helping us!"

He didn't stop to see if Kisame understood his orders, dropping to his knees next to Sasuke's unconscious form. Mentally offering an apology for the tens, if not hundreds, of inter-clan customs and rules that he was about to break, Neji closed his eyes briefly before opening them again, imbued with his power.

The parts of Sasuke's aura swirled in cacophonous disharmony before him, pain, anger, and despair fighting in equal parts where honesty and stubborn rashness had once reigned. His heart was beating, but slowly, painfully slow, and Neji stared harder at it, trying to discern the problem. Was this physical, or could he jumpstart Sasuke into consciousness with some of his own aura?

It would be risky, particularly if the reason Sasuke wasn't waking up had to do with leftover sedative in his system, or brain damage from being knocked out. Trying to inject him with some of his own power could exacerbate that problem, or in the worst case scenario, put him into a permanent coma. But if the reason he was still lying unconscious had more to do with mental exhaustion than physical damage, it might work. Neji was no doctor and the aura portrait his powers allowed him to see certainly wasn't a substitute for a real medical diagnosis, but he couldn't see any discoloration that mean physical damage in his heart and the surrounding arteries or brain stem, nor the off-white sluggishness that meant a drug was having an effect on the system so he decided to risk it.

Closing his eyes and ignoring the sharp retort of a gunshot behind him as best he could, Neji gathered the last scraps of power sitting unused in the extremities of his body and gathered it into his hands. When he felt like he had enough, he opened his eyes to see a faint blue light emanating from the palms of his hands. He held them over Sasuke's chest and closed his eyes briefly to make one last fervent wish that this would work before he fixed his gaze on the central apex of Sasuke's aura. He was going to need as much precision for this as he could get.

 _Wham!_

Neji brought his hands down in the center of Sasuke's chest, and the unconscious boy's body bucked off the floor as if he'd been just hit with a defibrillator. When he removed them, however, nothing had changed, and Neji prepared to do it again when suddenly Sasuke's eyes popped up with a gasp and he clutched desperately at the center of his chest.

"Mother _fucker_ that hurt! The hell, Neji! What'd you just hit me with, a baseball bat?"

Well, at least he wasn't dead.

"Glad to see you awake, Sleeping Beauty," Neji grunted by way of a response. "Think you could lend us a hand here?"

Another gunshot rang out into the air, and Sasuke's eyes suddenly went wide at the sound. He tried to push himself upright, then hissed and fell back to the ground. "What the hell is going on here?"

"Don't you remember where you are?" Neji asked, feeling a sense of urgency swell within him. If Sasuke didn't know where he was, he might have to revisit the idea of brain damage as a cause of the memory loss.

But, to Neji's relief, Sasuke nodded weakly. "Yeah, I remember the wraiths… but how did you get here?"

"We're here to rescue you, though a fine mess we're making of that," Neji answered grimly.

"Well, I'm untied, aren't I?" Then something in Neji's wording clicked in Sasuke's brain, and his eyes narrowed. "Wait, we? Who's with you?"

Another gunshot; their time was ticking away. Neji cast a glance over his shoulder to see that the wraiths were alarmingly close. "How many shots you got left, Kisame?"

"Just one," came the grim reply.

"KISAME?!" Sasuke screeched.

"It's a long story. Make it count, then, Kisame." Neji stood and turned his back to Sasuke, moving so he was shoulder to shoulder with Kisame and brandishing his knife. "Sasuke, I hate to ask this of you after all you've been through, but is there any chance you could help us out here?"

"Help you out- OH MY GOD TWO OF THEM ARE DEAD WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED HERE!?"

"Can you help us or not?!"

"I don't-! Neji, I can't even stand; do you think I can pull my Sharingan out of my ass?!"

"Then hurry up and stand, goddammit! We're not going to be able to take them on our own!"

"Okay, okay, I give!" Sasuke pulled himself up on his knees, and his face was covered in a panicked sweat, Neji discerned when he spared a quick glance behind him. "You were right! It was stupid for us to try and do this on our own! Just call for backup already!"

"DON'T YOU THINK I WOULD HAVE DONE THAT ALREADY IF IT WAS AN OPTION?!" Neji exploded.

Sasuke fell into a shocked silence that was broken by the sound of the bullet firing from Kisame's gun. Correction: the last bullet they had firing from Kisame's gun. His hands shaking, Kisame turned to look at Neji.

"What now?"

Neji never got a chance to answer; Kakuzu took advantage of the momentary distraction to seize Kisame by the collar with an invisible hand of wind and slam him the wall, much as he had done to Neji earlier. Unlike Neji, however, Kisame was slowly dragged off the ground, and he scrabbled at nothing wrapped around his neck like Tobi had done, the invisible noose preventing his lungs from inflating and making his eyes bug out. On the other side of Neji, a casual flick of Kakuzu's hand had Sasuke, who was trying desperately to stagger to his feet and failing miserably, knocked to the side with a cry of pain. That left Neji standing alone, unarmed except for a single silver knife clutched in his sweaty palms.

Deidara stalked toward him while his partner was occupied, a grin dripping from his face that contained more malice than Neji thought was humanly possible. In spite of himself, he took a shaky step backwards, then another, until his back hit the far wall of the small space and he could retreat no further.

"Don't- don't come any closer!" He gasped with as much confidence as he could muster.

Deidara just laughed, but did as Neji bid and stopped in his tracks. "As you wish, filthy human. It's not like I have to touch your sullied skin to burn you alive."

At the snap of the pyrokinetic wraith's fingers, a small fire blazed into life on Neji's wrist, and he dropped the knife, his only source of protection, while trying to slap it out with his other hand. It didn't behave like any kind of normal fire, however, and it refused to be put out, even when he completely smothered it with his other hand. The first licks of its tongues felt like little more than a ticklish darting touch, but the heat soon grew uncomfortable, and Neji knew they would soon start leaving scorch marks against his skin.

Dropping to the floor, he fumbled desperately for the knife he had dropped, only to find his path suddenly blocked by the burning two-by-four Deidara had wielded earlier, and he pulled backwards instinctively from the bright flames. Now the fire at his wrist was really starting to hurt, and as Neji desperately backpedaled only to hit the wall again, a second fire popped up on his thigh, closely followed by a third on his shoulder, dangerously close to his trailing hair.

The board followed him, slamming into his gut and pinning him to the wall, despite his struggled to push it off. Each time his hands came in contact with the flaming wood, they blistered as a wave of pure heat, unlike the torturously slow burns seeping through his clothes, slammed directly into his bloodstream, ripping sounds of agony from his throat. But Deidara only laughed the sounds he made and pushed the board against his chest harder, and the flames popping up all over Neji's body now only grew hotter.

 _Is this it?_ Neji wondered. _Is this how I finally die? Pathetic._

If he'd been asked before this mission what he thought his dying thoughts would consist of, Neji would have answered _Hinata, of course,_ but surprisingly there was no room for his cousin in his thoughts now. Instead, they were filled with images of shadows and dark eyes, a tattered army jacket fluttering in a nonexistent wind. His eyes slipped closed as he imagined the shadows slipping over his body as they had once before, quenching the fires that were starting to burn through his clothes and reach the tender skin underneath. But that wouldn't happen; Shikamaru could be anywhere now, even halfway across the world, and the heat from the fires was only growing…

Less intense?

The pressure from the board on Neji's chest suddenly loosened, and his eyes popped open to see the fires on his body being smothered by a dark blanket of sorts. His breath caught when he saw the blanket dissolve into a layer of shadow that sank into the floor around him, and the figure who had just pushed Deidara back with a blast of power turned to face him, ragged army jacket flaring as he did so.

"Hey, Neji," Shikamaru said in a low voice, his eyes dark and unreadable. "Sorry I'm late."


	35. A Sigh of Relief

And we're finally to the end of that fight! Took me long enough, am I right?

So just to let you guys know, I'm starting a new update schedule. From now until whenever this story is finished, I'm going to be updating a chapter at least every other day, of not every day. I know this seems crazy but the end is so close that I can almost taste it!

As always, thank you for your lovely comments and stay tuned for the next chapter tomorrow! (WHich will, just as a warning, be some shameless ShikaNeji smut, so please enjoy if you're into that thing or feel free to skip if you're not.)

See you soon!

Addi

* * *

Neji caught his breath at the sight of the phantom before him. Shikamaru looked different than he ever had before, his eyes sunken into his head like those of a copse and his expression holding a wild tint to it that gave him an almost alien air. As his gaze connected with Neji's, Neji couldn't help the thrill of fear that went down his spine.

Along with the helpless attraction that came with it.

The beath stopped moving in and out of Neji's lungs as Shikamaru turned his back on him to face down the pyrokinetic wraith, who was on the ground. Struggling upright with a curse, Deidara pulled a sheet of flames up from the ground to act as a kind of wall, which he hid behind. The non-physical barrier didn't help much, however, as Shikamaru sent forward a spike of shadow to part it, revealing the wraith's face and the first time Neji had seen fear written there.

"Don't you touch him!"

The words were snarled with more vehemence than Neji had ever heard Shikamaru use before, and he blinked in surprise. They sounded like the tone of voice he used when standing up for Hinata, the words of someone who was protecting someone they cared about very much.

Neji found himself liking that idea, probably more than he should.

Across the room, Kakuzu abandoned his focus on Kisame for a moment to send a gust of wind in aid of his comrade, but Shikamaru blocked it with a shadow. While his attention was still focused on Deidara, he lifted a hand and sent a sharp spike made of shadow tearing across the room towards Kakuzu without even glancing at him, the spear tearing through his middle and leaving him to quickly fizzle away at the edges before imploding with the force of a spectral supernova. All clues to his presence instantly vanished along with his spirit, the gale-force winds whipping around the room fading and Kisame thudding back down with a relieved expression on his face.

Neji's jaw dropped; the way that Shikamaru had dealt with the wraith as if it was nothing to him, and in protection of Neji no less, was a little… a little…

Sexy? Yeah, sexy worked.

Swallowing roughly, Neji pushed the now lax un-flaming board away from him and struggled to his feet. In front of him was the silver knife he must have dropped sometime during the confrontation before, and he seized it before standing up straight and walking over to stand behind Shikamaru. In a few quick, economical movements, the phantom reached between the flames and grabbed Deidara, putting him in a headlock and starting to apply pressure on his neck in a way that made Neji sure that his spine would snap soon.

Shikamaru met his gaze head-on as he stood in front of the phantom with the secured but still thrashing wraith in between them, then, to Neji's surprise, looked away. His expression was hollow, haunted, as if he couldn't bear to let Neji see what he had become.

Because he had changed, there was no doubt as to that. The darkness plaguing his face was one that Neji hadn't seen before, though he suspected he knew the cause. A flash of guilt had run across his face right after he'd ended Kakuzu's existence, and Neji remembered with vivid clarity the accusation Pein had made of him, of killing all their potential recruits before they could get to them.

Despite the situation, warmth blossomed in Neji's chest. Even though Neji had told him that he wasn't to play any part in this, that he was to wait elsewhere and trust, Shikamaru had taken it upon himself to find a little something he could do to make Neji's job easier. And despite the fact that doing that had obviously hurt him, he'd sought out every ghost that the wraiths might have an interest in and ended them before they could join the Akatsuki. If he hadn't interfered along the sidelines, Neji and Kisame might not have made it that far on their own. Shikamaru had saved their lives.

"Shikamaru," Neji called softly, and the phantom's eyes flashed up to meet his again, still haunted but housing a well-hidden layer of hope behind the front of self-anger. Stepping forward with a soft smile, Neji reached past Deidara to rest his palm on Shikamaru's semi-solid cheek. Shikamaru stiffened at what he obviously thought was an accusation and tried to pull away, but Neji curled his fingers around his jaw and refused to let him pull away. "Thank you," Neji breathed, and this time shock popped the phantom's eyes open wide. "You saved me… you saved all of us. _Thank you._ "

Blinking, Shikamaru nodded, and Neji thought he saw the hint of a tear in the corner of his eye. "I thought you were… don't _scare_ me like that ever again, you idiot! You could have been killed! You don't need to do everything by yourself! I would have helped you if you'd only let me!"

"I know, and I'm sorry." Neji help up the silver blade and pressed close to Deidara's throat, which also had the lucky side effect of causing the wraith to stop struggling as the knife came close enough that a twist in the wrong direction could cause an unintentional brush against the burning metal. "So help me now?"

There was a fractional widening and then subsequent narrowing of Shikamaru's eyes as Neji's meaning hit him, then he nodded. "Together?"

"Together."

Deidara struggled in earnest again as Shikamaru's grip tightened, ignoring the burning silver brands that appeared on his collarbone that came from hitting against Neji's blade as he thrashed, but there was nowhere for him to go, and the fires he lit around them were quickly smothered by Shikamaru's shadows. At a nod from the phantom, Neji plunged the knife into the pyrokinetic wraith's breast at the same time as Shikamaru snapped his neck, and within a few moments the once terrifying spirit had dissolved into the ether again.

Neji fell forward into Shikamaru's chest, dropping the knife on the floor with a clatter, and the phantom chuckled as he ran his fingers through Neji's tangled hair. "Long night?"

"You have no idea," Neji whispered back, his cheek pressed to the rough fabric of the phantom's army jacket. His fingers curled against Shikamaru's chest like a small child seeking comfort against its mother's heart, drawing another indulgent noise from the phantom's throat as he leaned down to press a lingering kiss against the top of Neji's head.

"Neji?! What's going on?! Is that-? Oh my God, it is!"

Neji's first instinct was to pull away from Shikamaru as if he'd been burned when Sasuke's voice rang through the air, but he knew that would only make him look guiltier than he already was in the Uchiha's eyes, so he took a deep breath and slowly pushed back from the phantom's embrace. Fixing his gaze on the affronted Sasuke and the shell-shocked Kisame standing next to him, he allowed a relieved smile to crack his anxious facade, the first in days.

"It's alright, Sasuke, Kisame," he breathed as Shikamaru's fingers smoothed down his back. "They're gone. We won."

"But… but he's-" Sasuke started to stutter, his mouth dropping open comically as he pointed to the ghost next to Neji, by the Hyuuga cut him off.

"Not your problem," he said firmly. "He's not officially here. Got it?"

Sasuke bit his lip and Neji could tell that he wanted to argue with him, but he finally nodded. "Fine. You kept my secret, so I'll keep yours. Just… take care of yourself, okay?"

With a terse nod, Neji said, "You don't have to worry about me."

Raising a hand into the air, Kisame asked, "Um, so I'm not exactly sure what's going on here, so maybe-?"

"It's better if you don't know," both Sasuke and Neji said in tandem, smirking a little at the shocked expression on Kisame's face. That was a line that had been drilled into them for as long as they could remember, and involving Kisame in that fight hadn't changed any of that.

Despite making it to a standing position, Sasuke was still leaning heavily against Kisame's shoulder, and Neji read the lines of fatigue and sickness written on his brow. "We need to get you some medical attention, and quickly."

"I'm fine-" Sasuke tried to protest, but Neji cut him off with a quick shake of his head.

"No, you're absolutely not fine. You're severely dehydrated, not to mention physically injured, and I had to blast a bit of my aura into your body in order to resuscitate you-"

"WHAT?!"

"So you'll need to get that checked out as well. Shikamaru?" He turned to the phantom next to him. "Sorry to be a bother, but is there any way you could get us to the mainland? Sasuke needs to see a doctor as soon as possible."

After a moment of consideration Shikamaru nodded. "I can get you there, but not all in one trip, not that far and over open water."

"That's fine; can you take Sasuke and Kisame at once, then come back for me and our weapons? I just don't want him to be left alone."

"That I can do." Without waiting for Neji's response, Shikamaru turned to Kisame and Sasuke and held out his hands. Shadows sprang up from the ground to envelop them, and Kisame gave an unmanly shriek as they sank into the floor in Shikamaru's unique talent of teleportation through the shadows. In hindsight, Neji thought, perhaps they should have warned him, but it was too late now.

He spent the minute it took Shikamaru to teleport the two people to the main shoreline and back to the Statue cleaning up all the signs of human habitation. When the phantom appeared behind him and snaked his arms about Neji's waist, he raised his eyes skeptically.

"Why are we taking the rope and the board with us?"

"A Hyuuga is trained to leave behind no trace of their activities," Neji answered, digging his fingers into Shikamaru's arm in response to his closeness. "This area is closed to the public right now, but I don't know if guards or cleaners ever come up here to check on things and we don't want anyone getting suspicious of what happened here tonight."

"Hmm. Good plan." The words rumbled in Neji's ear, sending a shiver down his spine. "Do you want me to dump them in the river?"

"Thank you, that would be perfect."

"Will do." Shikamaru waved a hand, and the offending materials disappeared down into the floor. "You ready?"

Neji nodded; if he ever had to see the Statue of Liberty again in his entire life, it would be too soon. "Get me out of this place."

Even though he'd just seen it twice and had been transported through Shikamaru's shadows before, Neji couldn't help the wave of uncertainty that spiked through his body as he watched the dark tendrils travel up his legs.

The last time Neji had been teleported by Shikamaru's shadows, it had been an unpleasant surprise and he'd been angry at how intimate it had felt. Now that he was expecting it, it wasn't as unpleasant or surprising, but still felt just as intimate as the first time, his entire being wrapped up in Shikamaru's warm, dark essence until Neji was breathing him in. The warmth felt good, like a strong hug, and Neji almost wished that it wouldn't end when he felt the shadows dissolve away from his body and discovered that he was standing on the mainland again.

Kisame shuddered at the sight of him. "Okay, watching that happen to someone else is even freakier than having it done to yourself."

Regret flashed through Neji. "Damn, I forgot you didn't know anything about that. Sorry, Kisame."

"It's fine. After everything that happened today, I'd be ashamed of myself if that was what finally broke me." A relieved grin grew on his face. "So, by the fact that we're back here, I take it that mission was a success?"

"Definitely." Again, a spike of anger drove through Neji; he hadn't taken Kisame into consideration at all! The poor man was probably confused beyond belief. "And I'm sorry, but you should probably get out of here as quickly as you can. I need to call someone to help Sasuke, and it would probably be best for you if you aren't around when they get here."

"I get it." Kisame picked up the weapons Shikamaru had brought through with them and stowed them about his person with practiced ease. "I'm glad I could help."

"I couldn't have done it without you. Thank you," Neji said with gratitude.

"No problem." With a final wave, Kisame turned and jogged down the waterfront.

Neji waited until he disappeared before turning to Shikamaru. "You should probably go too," he said with a sigh, putting some distance between the two of them, though he wanted nothing more than to rest his head back on the phantom's chest. It had been a long night. "You don't want to still be here when the cavalry arrives."

"You don't need to worry about me. I can teleport, remember." Shikamaru reached out and reeled Neji back, causing the very fibers of his being to cry out in relief. God, he missed this. "Are you okay?"

"Just exhausted and overworked," Neji admitted. "But much better now… now that this is finally over." He lapsed into a brief silence before speaking again. "I know what you did, you know."

A dark cloud flitted over Shikamaru's vision and he tensed, as if he was waiting for Neji to pull away again, as he had earlier. "You do?"

"Yes." Neji touched his cheek with a smile. "You saved us. Thank you."

Shikamaru's brow knitted tighter. "Neji, that's not all I did. I-"

"I know. That's what I'm referring to."

The lines on Shikamaru's brow ironed out, and he leaned his forehead against Neji's. "I would understand if you didn't want anything to do with me now. I mean, you've always known I had the capacity to be a monster, but now I've proven it to you."

"By _saving us_ ," Neji reiterated. "You're not a monster, Shikamaru. Would a monster have done this much for another person?"

Shikamaru gave a single, indecipherable blink. "I would have done more if I could. If you'd have asked, I would have done anything to help you."

"And that is precisely why you're not a monster."

It only took a split second for Shikamaru to close the distance between their mouths, and Neji was lost as soon as the phantom's lips brushed against his own. A gentle presser at the back of his neck guided him closer, and he probably would have forgotten about the outside world for quite a while had Sasuke not chosen that precise moment to wolf-whistle.

"Get a room, you too!"

Neji pulled back reluctantly, giving Shikamaru a sheepish smile. "Probably best if I get him to the doctor."

"Then you'll come home?" Shikamaru pressed, refusing to let go until Neji nodded.

 _Home._ He'd never called his apartment that before; he didn't see the point, considering he'd never really held much attachment to it. It was only now, facing the prospect of sharing it with someone else, that he even dared think of it as such.

"I'll come when I can. That's all I can promise for now. This whole thing will be a mess that I have to clean up."

Shikamaru gave an understanding nod. "Take your time. I'll be waiting."

His heart leaping at the words, Neji stretched up to place one final kiss on the phantom's lips - proud when he caught him off-guard - then turned around and fished his phone from his pocket, pressing the button to turn it on and watching the dim screen light up. With a soft exhale of spiritual breath, he felt Shikamaru fade into the ground behind him, and it was only when he was gone that Neji was able to meet Sasuke's shocked, yet triumphant smile.

"So are we gonna talk about what just happened?"

"Not if you value your life," Neji retorted. "I kept your secret, now you keep mine. I'm calling for a doctor."

Without waiting for a response from Sasuke, Neji dialed the number for the Hyuuga offices in New York City. Tokuma picked up on the first ring, as if he'd been staring at the phone all night waiting for Neji's call.

"Neji! Thank Jesus! They wouldn't let me contact you, but everyone at the office has been worried sick! What's your location? Never mind, I can just ping your phone. God, I knew it was a suicide mission they sent you on, especially alone, but they're watching us, we couldn't do anything until you called first! What's the situation? Do you need backup? How many of them are there? How long can you hold out? What-?"

"Tokuma," Neji cut in, and only then did the panicked man pause for breath. "I'm… I'm fine, actually. In one piece, even, but Sasuke could use a medic. Can you arrange for transportation for us?"

Tokuma sucked in a gasp. "You mean- you did it? They're gone?"

"The threat has been neutralized, and the hostage has been recovered," Neji relayed, unable to resist the smug tone that entered his voice. Take that, control freaks!

"You did-! This…! Holy sh- I mean, you… you… I'll send a car for you two!"

The line went dead, and Neji lowered his phone. "They're sending someone to pick us up."

"Good." Sasuke found his way to one of the benches lining the waterfront and rested his legs with a sigh. "I am so glad that's over."

"Did they…?" Neji was almost too afraid to ask. "You know… torture you? To get the information they wanted?"

"They tried to." Sasuke shrugged, and Neji felt his heart go out to the younger man. "I was lucky. I think I was out for most of the time so they couldn't do anything to me, and most of the rest of the time they tried to convince me to join their side without using violence. I'm glad you got me out of there when you did, though, because I'm sure it wasn't too far down the barrel." He flashed Neji a cheeky grin that did little to hide how much he was hurting. "We'll just have to be more careful not to let one of get captured next time."

Wincing at the thought, Neji sat down next to Sasuke. "Next time?"

Sasuke stiffened. "I just thought… Unless you don't want to have anything more to do with me… I mean, I can't exactly blame you; you probably want a partner who you're not going to have to babysit-"

"I was thinking more along the lines of if you would ever trust me enough to work with me again, after I let you get captured."

"Ah- well…" Sasuke scratched his head sheepishly. "I, um, I mean, that would be pretty difficult." Then he sent a smile Neji's way. "But I could definitely trust the man who broke into a National Monument with no backup except a man who can't see ghosts and a phantom, which, for the record, is absolutely insane. I still can't fucking believe you managed to pull that off."

"Neither can I," Neji agreed dryly.

"Must have been some kind of miracle, huh?"

Neji snorted. He didn't believe in miracles. "If you say so. Now shut up and listen to me. We need to iron out the story of what we're going to tell them happened tonight before your doctor gets here."

* * *

Itachi was waiting for his companion to come home in the wee hours of the morning, sitting at the long table in the hall used mostly for meetings. His forehead rested against the cool surface of the wood, but he did not sleep. His mind wouldn't quiet enough for him to sleep.

Sometime around one AM, Miru found him sitting there and tried to rouse him.

"Hey, Itachi, why are you sleeping here? Come on, I'll help you to your room."

"I'm not asleep," Itachi grumbled tersely. "And I'm not going to be until Kisame comes back. Leave me alone."

But she hadn't, instead sitting with him to assist with his silent vigil despite how tired she must have been. More than once, her breathing slowed to the steady, even roll of sleep, but within a minute it always jumped up to a regular tempo with a gasp. Though she had no grasp of the situation and the magnitude of the trouble Kisame might find himself in at that very moment, Itachi was grateful for the company, even if it was just something else to focus on besides his own mind creating increasingly terrible worst case scenarios.

After a few more sleepless hours had ticked by, finally Itachi's sensitive ears picked up the soft opening and closing of the first door, the latching clicking softly into the frame as if the person who had just come through was trying his best not to wake anyone. Miru was in the middle of one of her cycles of sleep, and she jolted awake with an uncertain grunt when Itachi pushed his chair back from the table and ran to the door of the table room.

Heavy footsteps - Kisame's footsteps - echoed down the corridor, but they stopped when he rounded the corner and caught sight of Itachi standing there.

"You didn't have to wait up for me, you know."

"As if I could sleep!"

Itachi launched himself and Kisame, and the bigger man chuckled as he caught him. He staggered backwards a little under Itachi's weight, making Itachi feel bad since he hadn't even considered the fact that Kisame could have been injured when he put them on a collision course, but Kisame seemed solid enough when he pulled Itachi against his large chest and held him there.

Behind them, Miru stepped out from the room, unsuccessfully stifling a yawn. "Kisame, you're - ahh - back."

" _Et tu_ , Miru?" Kisame gave Itachi a light squeeze as he buried his face against the bigger man's neck. "I'm not a child, both of you. I can take care of myself."

"Not against wraiths you can't even see, you can't," Itachi murmured low enough that Miru wouldn't be able to hear, to which Kisame responded with a hand running through his hair and quiet whisper.

"That Hyuuga boy took good care of me."

Then he pushed Itachi back a little and smoothed the hair back from his forehead. "You worry too much."

"You don't worry enough." At the mention of Hyuuga, Itachi had stiffened. "So… I take it you were successful, then? Sasuke is…?"

He couldn't bring himself to say the word, but Kisame finished his thought for him. "Safe, yes. We were able to get him out. The Hyuuga's taking him to get medical attention."

Itachi sagged so hard in relief that his knees bucked, and he would have hit the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cu had Kisame not caught him. "Thank _God._ And the… the... um…"

Thankfully, Kisame picked up what Itachi was trying to say without him having to actually say it. "Gone, as far as I could tell. You won't have to worry about running into them by mistake."

Gratitude crashed through Itachi like a tsunami, carving out the rest of his emotions and leaving nothing in its wave but the evidence of its passing. "Thank you, Kisame. I… I don't know if I can ever thank you enough."

"So," Miru suddenly cut in, suspicious starting to creep into her tone, "I'm starting to think that this wasn't just a patrol to get reacquainted with the territory, was it, Kisame? Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

"Oh! Miru! I, uh, I forgot you were there." Kisame jumped guiltily. "I mean, it was, I just happened to do something else too… old life catching up to me and all that… and I'm not supposed to talk about it… confidentiality and stuff… you know the drill…. Sorry I didn't tell you the truth, though."

"Hm." It was clear that Miru wasn't pleased, but she didn't press Kisame any further. "Just… I know you felt like you couldn't tell me where you were really going, but can you at least tell me that next time? That way I know if I need challenge one of our rivals or not if you don't come home."

It was a simple enough request, logical and worthy of the analytical mind of one like Miru, and Itachi felt Kisame nod. "Agreed. I'm still getting used to this whole working in a group thing again. Thank you for being so understanding."

"Hmph." Miru pushed herself away from the doorframe she was leaning against with a sigh. "I'll leave you to it, then. I can tell you're itching to talk but won't with me here. Night, you two."

Kisame inclined his head in return. "Goodnight, Miru. See you in the morning."

When she turned to leave, Itachi called out after her. "Miru?"

"What is it, Itachi?"

"Thank you," he said quietly, smiling softly in her direction. "For staying with me. I- well, as you could probably tell, I wasn't in a very good way. You were… a big help."

"Hey, you're one of us, aren't you? We help our family."

She walked away before Itachi could respond to that. His jaw was hanging open comically, and Kisame stifled a chuckle as he pulled the shorter man back against his chest. "It's not often I get so see you speechless."

"She… she called me _family_ , Kisame," Itachi murmured into the thick material of Kisame's jacket, still a little chill from the night air and- was that a hint of salt spray? "I've never… I never thought…"

"You belong here, Itachi, with us." Kisame pressed a kiss to his temple. "And you always will, because I… I… I love you, too."

Itachi's heart stopped. His breath caught in his throat, then came out all at once in a rushing sob. Finally. _Finally_. He'd waited so long for those words that he almost didn't believe he'd actually heard them, but then Kisame seized his jaw in both hands and pressed more kisses to his face, on his nose, his cheekbones, the hint of the scar peeking out from underneath the bandana wrapped around his empty eye sockets, and each one was accompanied by another "I love you."

Choking back a sob, Itachi threw his arms around Kisame neck and clung to it like a lifeline, gasping a disjointed combination of the words back at him. They probably didn't make any sense, but Kisame just laughed and brushed their noses together.

"Come on, let's get to bed. We're both exhausted."

Itachi wasn't about to complain, especially when Kisame's strong arms lifted him off the floor and carried him to the room Kisame stayed in, the room Itachi slept in most nights even though he had one to call his own on the other side of the conjoining door spanning their closets. He had finally found someplace to call home.


	36. Shadows of Desire

And here it is, guys: the promised ShikaNeji chapter! **BE WARNED** that this chapter contains a lemon and not much else, so if you're not into that you can just skip this chapter, but if you are, please enjoy!

And don't worry, Shiroi Hato-san, I'm not overexerting myself! From here on out I had mapped out the best of any part of this story, so it's going to be really easy for me to write it up quickly. So don't worry about me and enjoy!

* * *

It took a full three days for Neji to get back to his apartment in Seattle, with all the debriefing meetings he had to attend, the carefully constructed lies he had to spin to avoid giving away Itachi's part in the plot, and the air travel back to Washington. The only time he'd managed to get any kind of decent rest was on the plane, which wasn't saying much since he could never sleep well while flying. When he finally unlocked the door to his apartment and threw his suitcase on the floor, not even bothering to check where it ended up, he wanted nothing more than to fall into his own bed face first and not resurface until the apocalypse, or perhaps later.

As soon as he closed the door behind him, however, a familiar presence caught at the edges of his perception, and the tiredness melted from his bones to be replaced with anticipation. There was someone waiting for him, someone to finally christen his measly little two-room apartment a home.

The chessboard was set up in the middle of the floor of his bedroom, Neji discovered when he pushed the door open, and on the opposite side, behind the barrier of a line of black pawns, was a familiar dark phantom.

"Welcome home, Neji," Shikamaru said with a smile. "It's your turn."

Neji almost melted right there and then, but he forced himself to make it to his side of the chessboard before he collapsed to the floor. "You have no idea how good it feels to hear you say that."

Smiling in apologetic understanding, Shikamaru asked, "Long road back?"

"Unequivocally. I don't think I've ever been grilled that hard in my life. I was only lucky that the Elders decided my actions were outside of the jurisdiction of the Hyuuga family. That meant they didn't have to make sure I upheld any of the rules, so I could easily avoid giving away your or Kisame's involvement." Neji deliberated for a moment at the chessboard in front of him, enjoying the comfortable challenge despite how tired he was, before moving a piece forward. "I didn't mean to keep you waiting for so long."

"That's alright. I managed to occupy myself just fine." Shikamaru mirrored his move on the chessboard, then tapped the top of the piece. "Check."

"You're too good at this!" Neji complained good-naturedly as he sniped the piece holding his king at check.

"And you've gotten better." Shikamaru flashed him a smile, the brief glimpse of his white canine teeth blinding in the dim light. "But not good enough. Checkmate."

Neji blinked down at the board. "So soon?"

The wistfulness in his tone drew a chuckle from the phantom. "Do you want to play again?"

Shaking his head, Neji moved to clean up the chess pieces that had been moved off the board, purposefully not meeting the Shikamaru's dark gaze. "Too tired. Maybe tomorrow?"

"I'll hold you too that." Shikamaru caught Neji's wrist, forcing him to stop his actions. "What's bothering you, Neji?"

Damn, Shikamaru was too perceptive for his own good. Neji smiled at him in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. "Work to catch up on, reports, worrying about Sasuke's recovery- just family stuff. I'm fi-"

Before he could finish the word, Neji found his mouth covered by a strong pressure that effectively ended any more attempts at excuses he might try to make, and he unconsciously leaned into the kiss. Shikamaru's hand came up to cup the back of his neck for a few seconds, then he pulled away with aching slowness and leaned his forehead against Neji's. When Neji opened his eyes - when had he closed them? He didn't remember doing so, though he must have - all he saw was the phantom's gaze boring into his own, encompassing immeasurable darkness.

"Now are you ready to tell me what's bothering you?" He murmured gently, rubbing his thumb across Neji's cheekbones.

"I… I…" Neji looked down; he couldn't meet Shikamaru's gaze while he admitted this. "Back at the, um… when we were in New York, and you came and r-rescued us from the wraiths…"

Shikamaru tensed, and Neji could tell that his overactive mind had already jumped to the worst case scenario, so he quickly grabbed the phantom's hand.

"No! No, that's not what I meant. I could never… anyway, I just… You were there, and you just- defeated them like nothing! And you did it to protect _me_ , and all I could think about was… you."

When Shikamaru spoke after a few seconds of deliberation, the sound was quick and harsh, like the crack of a whip. "Explain."

Neji squirmed under the heat of his gaze slightly, though he still avoided looking up to see the things that would be written there. "When you were standing there, in front of me, and you were… you were _killing_ them, I know I should have felt… disgusted is a little harsh, but certainly not good. Instead, all I could think about was how much I… wanted… you."

"You wanted me?"

"Well, who wouldn't!" Neji exploded. "I mean, you're incredibly- Look, it doesn't have to mean anything, okay! It's just what I was feeling at the time, probably just adrenaline rush or something, and I know you can't… you can't… _do_ that, so you don't have to-"

Shikamaru cut Neji off by placing a hand over his mouth, pulling his face back up so Neji was forced to look into his eyes again. "Do you still want me?"

"I… I…" Neji was going to deny it, but the smoky overtones of Shikamaru's gaze were doing strange things to his stomach, so what came out instead was a moaned, "Oh, _God_ yes."

"Then, if you want… you can have me."

"Wh… what?" Neji jerked back from Shikamaru's touch in surprise. "I thought-! You said you couldn't!"

"I _couldn't_ ," Shikamaru agreed, putting stress on the past tense of the verb. "But I really wanted to, so I figured it out. Right now, I can be as real for you as anyone still alive."

Real… for him. Neji sucked in a harsh breath and reached out to brush a fingertip over Shikamaru's exposed collarbone. The skin was solid and faintly warm to the touch. Biting his lower lip in a mixture of uncertainty and anticipation, Neji dragged his hand down the front of the phantom's chest, feeling the material of his shirt slide against the flesh underneath, the two phases distinctly separate from each other. When he reached the hem of the shirt, his eyes darted up to Shikamaru's face for permission, and when he found nothing there to stop him he reached under the edge of the phantom's shirt and splayed his fingers across his stomach.

A defined abdomen met his searching fingertips, skin shifting over corded muscle as his diaphragm expanded and contracted. Neji pressed his hand flat to that toned stomach, feeling every breath Shikamaru exhaled like it was a lifeline.

He certainly felt real, all right. The only thing missing was a heartbeat.

"Neji."

Neji recognized the urgency in Shikamaru's tone as he looked back up at the phantom's face.

"Shikamaru…"

"Neji, you shouldn't touch like that unless you plan to finish the job."

Eyes going wide, Neji glanced down at Shikamaru's crotch. His gaze and the thumb he accidentally brushed lower told him that he was hard. The knowledge brought an answering rush of heat in his lower stomach.

Without warning, Shikamaru seized Neji and pulled him in for a kiss that soon devolved into open-mouthed ferver. Somehow, they tilted backwards until Shikamaru's back hit the floor amidst the chess pieces they'd only half cleaned up, Neji straddling his waist. Both of the phantom's hands found their way to rest securely on the globes of Neji's ass, causing him to unconsciously rock backwards, producing a delicious friction between their lower bodies.

With a groan, Shikamaru broke the kiss. "Are you sure you want this, Neji?" He breathed, his eyes dark and expressive. "Something like this… you can't undo it once it's been done."

"I- I know." Neji's hair slid forward as he bent his neck, hiding his eyes, but he reached up and pushed the strands back behind his ear. "I know I shouldn't, but… you're all I can think about. I don't care anymore what my family thinks I should do. I just want _you_."

Shikamaru pulled Neji's hips forward with a sharp yank, a sly lazy grin on his face. "Glad to hear it. Because I want you, too."

Unable to resist, Neji rolled his hips Shikamaru's with a sharp pressure, and was rewarded with a sharp sound torn from the phantom's throat and his sly grin slipping slightly. "Then what are you waiting for?"

The light of a challenge lit up in Shikamaru's eyes, and in one quick movement he pushed Neji up and onto the bed, following close behind. Neji bounced a little when he hit the mattress, but Shikamaru's solid weight soon slid on top of him and held him down. After another breathless, open-mouthed kiss that seemed to go on forever, Shikamaru pulled away, a finger tracing Neji's bottom lip, swollen and a little bruised from their activities, with uncertainty.

"You do you want to do this? Do you want me to, or…"

Neji's face flushed harder than before when he realized what Shikamaru was asking. After a brief moment's deliberation, he forced himself to meet the phantom's gaze head on, despite the embarrassment squirming in his gut. He didn't deserve to get what he wanted if he was too ashamed to ask for it.

"I think… I want you inside of me. I want to feel you."

Pleasure - and was that a little pride? - flashed across Shikamaru's face, almost too quickly for Neji to follow. "I thought as much, but I didn't want to assume," he murmured as he leaned down and pressed his lips against the side of Neji's neck, the vibrations from his voice sending delicious tingles down his spine.

Neji was glad he'd asked, because he wasn't sure how he would have reacted if Shikamaru had just assumed instead of asking. But Shikamaru was closing in on him, pressing an open mouthed kiss against his neck where his lips had previously brushed. Neji arched into the contact at his neck, fingers pulling desperately at the back of the phantom's shirt when the sharp bite of teeth made their mark on his tender skin.

Seeming to get the idea, Shikamaru rolled his shoulders gently and his shirt disappeared, leaving the well-defined planes of his back open for Neji's exploration. They felt as solid under Neji's fingernails as the rest of him, if a little cooler to the touch than his own skin, which was scalding with the heat running through him. One of Shikamaru's hands yanked his shirt out of his pants and raked the form fitting button-down up to his armpits as best he could as Neji ran his hands the opposite direction down the phantom's back until he reached the waistband of his pants, pulling at his belt loops to rock their hips closer together.

With an impatient growl, Shikamaru detached from Neji's neck and yanked at the buttons on his shirt until he had created a large enough hole for him to slip his head through, while Neji watched in amusement and offered as little assistance as possible. It felt exhilarating to watch the normally collected phantom struggle for something.

"Why do you wear clothes that are so difficult to take off?" He complained as he finally managed to get both of Neji's arms out of the shirt and threw it across the room in retribution for its efforts in the estrangement of their goal.

Neji tugged pointedly at Shikamaru's belt loops, then slipped his fingers along the rim of his pants until he got to the front, where he teased at the button holding them up. "Maybe that's the point."

Something behind Shikamaru's gaze lit up, and he leaned back down with a devilish grin. "Unwrapping the gift is half the fun, is that what you're trying to say?"

"Something like tha- ah!"

Neji was interrupted by the pressure of Shikamaru's hand settling directly against the front of his pants. His thumb played with the him of Neji's waistband for a moment, dipping behind the fabric to brush against his boxers, before he flicked the button of his slacks open with a contemptuous carelessness. When that was done, he delved underneath the top layer of fabric with both hands to slide it out from underneath Neji's posterior, then dragged the article off Neji's legs with excruciating slowness, leaning down to run his lips and tongue across every strip of bare skin that was exposed.

"I… I think… you don't have to take… that long…" Neji gasped, squirming under Shikamaru's ministrations, especially when he nipped at the tender patch of skin behind his knee.

"Then be careful what you say." But Shikamaru pressed an apologetic kiss against the area he'd bitten and pull Neji's pants off the rest of the way with more purpose and less teasing.

When he'd discarded the pants the same way as he'd disposed of the shirt, Shikamaru reached for the elastic waistband of Neji's boxers, but Neji stopped him, pulling his legs underneath him to kneel and reaching for the phantom.

"Not yet. It's your turn now."

Shikamaru made a move as if to dismiss his pants in the same way he'd gotten rid of his shirt, but Neji caught his hand.

"Can I… Can I do it?"

After a brief moment, the phantom nodded, and Neji released his hand. They were both sitting on their knees facing each other, and Neji found his gaze drawn to the tightness of the fabric against Shikamaru's groin. The phantom had seen him twice before, but this would be Neji's first time seeing Shikamaru - or another man, for that matter - naked. His hands shook slightly as he reached for the button on the phantom's pants. Shikamaru had seemed so confident, so practiced, while undressing Neji, and here he could scarcely bear to entertain the notion without shaking.

"Neji?"

Neji took a deep breath and pulled at the top of Shikamaru's pants, popping open the button. He had to stifle a laugh when he realized that the ghost hadn't bothered to make himself a pair of underwear. His fingers delved between the fabric and the cool skin of Shikamaru's hip, accidentally brushing against the swell of an ass cheek when he reached too far, before he grabbed the edge and started to pull it down. The fabric descended more rapidly than his own had in his haste born from nervousness, and Shikamaru shifted his weight forward so Neji could pull them down off his waist without them catching on the heels of his feet, which he was sitting on.

Neji got them down around Shikamaru's knees before he stalled, staring at the phantom's naked form. His thighs were as muscular as his abdomen was and what lay between them… Neji felt his mouth go dry. His fingers itched to reach forward and stroke it, bereft of the pleasure of past occasions. As if sensing the way his thoughts were going, Shikamaru chucked and made his pants disappear, leaving himself bare for Neji's inspection.

"You can touch, if you want."

The permission made his heart beat faster, and before he knew what he was doing he had done just that, dragging his thumb down the line of muscle that led to his groin before tracing it down the length of the phantom's cock. It was already half-hard, and twitched thicker as he allowed his fingers to slip across it, drawing a hissing intake of air from Shikamaru. Emboldened by the phantom's reaction, Neji curled his hand around it and stroked up and down a few times before looking up to ask a question.

"If it's alright… I'd like to pay you back for earlier?"

"How so?"

There was no trepidation in Shikamaru's eyes, only curiosity and desire, so Neji simply leaned forward and let his breath ghost over the phantom's length by way of answer. The hitch in his breath told Neji that Shikamaru understood exactly what he wanted to do, so he tucked his hair over his shoulder and closed the final few inches between his mouth and the tip of Shikamaru's dick.

He wasn't exactly sure what he had expected it to taste like, and now that it was inside his mouth, Neji still couldn't tell exactly what it tasted like. Normal skin tasted like salt from sweat and Neji assumed that that would extend to penises as well, with the addition of a few extra flavors unique to the musk produced there, but Shikamaru wasn't exactly normal. It did taste faintly like something undeniably masculine, perhaps the taste of what semen smelled like, but overall he was mostly overcome by the weight of it against his tongue, not the taste. He swirled his tongue experimentally over the head of it to test his theory, and when he found that faint scent-made-taste a little stronger, but not by much, he figured that his theory was correct and pulled back a little.

A line of spit connected Neji's bottom lip to the tip of Shikamaru's cock that broke as he got further away. A frown creased the middle of his eyebrows as he realized that only a fraction of the flesh in front of his face was damp from his saliva, and he cocked his head to the side to consider the problem. Lowering his head again, instead of taking it from the front, Neji went at it down the side, alternating between pressing kisses and little licks down the length.

As Neji bent to reach further downwards, he shifted forward so that he was resting on all fours with the exception of one hand on Shikamaru's hip, and his hair slid out from where he'd tucked it behind his ear and tickled the phantom's thigh. The effect was instantaneous; Shikamaru jerked and before Neji knew what had happened, one of his hands was fisting the hair at the back of his head. He winced at the pain of his hair being pulled and the hand distanged a second later as Shikamaru apologized.

"Shit! I'm sorry, Neji, I didn't mean to hurt you. It was an accident. Won't happen again."

Neji rested his cheek against Shikamaru's dick and looked up at him. "Do you like it?"

Shikamaru swallowed, his adam's apple bobbing. "What?"

"My… hair? Do you like it?"

Carefully, without pulling this time, Shikamaru threaded his hand back through Neji's hair and gripped the back part like a ponytail. "Yeah. Yeah, I really like it. I always have. It's like a curtain that hides you away the world. Sometimes, I think I can get lost in there."

Neji pulled against the grip in his hair, and it loosened somewhat but didn't let go, giving him just enough room to be able to bob his head back and forth. Without breaking eye contact with Shikamaru, Neji flicked the hair that wasn't held in the phantom's iron grip over the front of his shoulders so it draped down between them, then went back down on the hard cock in front of him. His hair flowed messily over Shikamaru's thighs and balls, so much so that Neji couldn't really see what he was doing, but the reaction the phantom gave was worth it. His cock jerked in Neji's mouth as he growled, the fist in his hair tightening and driving the movements of his head further down.

It wasn't too much for Neji to take just yet, so he let Shikamaru control the motion of his head for a few thrusts. Eventually he reached back and pulled the phantom's hand out of his hair so he could control his own movements, and he pushed his hair forward further so even more of it got tangled on Shikamaru's thighs. He bobbed up and down for a moment before the sound of one of his bedside drawers opening ricocheted through the quiet room, and he pulled back to see Shikamaru call a small bottle of something to his hand with telekinesis.

"Is that what I think it is?"

Shikamaru at least had the decency to look embarrassed. "If you think it's lube, then, yes, exactly what you think it is."

"Since when has there been lube in my dresser?"

Scratching the back of his head, Shikamaru admitted, "Since I put it there two days ago."

Neji glared at him. "So you knew this was going to happen?"

"Not knew… but I hoped." He raised the bottle. "Do you mind?"

Did he mind that there was lube in his drawer? Neji didn't particularly mind that, once the shock wore off, but he suspected that that wasn't the question Shikamaru was asking him.

Would he mind if Shikamaru fingered him open while he sucked the ghost off? That was probably closer to what Shikamaru had meant. Neji was quiet for a second as the image popped into his mind, and despite the lewd words that he'd struggled to think without a blush - not that his cheeks weren't already red - the thought brought a spike of heat to his lower belly. Not trusting himself to speak, he just nodded and leaned down to resume where he'd left off working Shikamaru's cock in his mouth, angling his hips higher at the same time to give the phantom a better angle.

Shikamaru's hand first settled at the palm of Neji's back, then pushed the edge of his boxers down to expose the slightest strip of his ass. Shivering at the cool air against his bare skin, Neji pushed into that touch, and Shikamaru took that as a cue to push the underwear down around Neji's knees. His fingers dug appreciatively into the generous cheeks presented to him before Neji felt one hand withdraw, only to return coated in a cool substance that quickly became warm with the heat of Neji's skin.

It had been some time since Shikamaru had first opened Neji up like this, and the first press of his finger took some effort to push past the ring of muscle guarding his hole. Once it was in, however, Neji felt his body relax and open up like it remembered the feel from before and was desperate to replicate it. As Shikamaru split him open to his first knuckle, he moaned around the hard flesh in his mouth, causing the phantom to jerk his hips forward, propelling Neji backwards onto his finger.

Neji's eyes watered as the tip of Shikamaru's dick went past the point of comfort in his mouth and he fought to keep his gag reflex in check. Pulling off entirely, he coughed as spit dripped from lips and got caught in his hair. It felt disgusting to Neji, but glancing up he caught sight of Shikamaru's eyes blown wide with desire, and he decided he didn't mind it that much, especially when a second finger, chilled in slippery lube, entered him with the first.

"Why is it so cold?" Neji shivered, his hair fluttering about him like feathery wings as he shook his head.

"Ah, sorry about that. Most people warm it up in their hand before, but obviously…"

Obviously that wouldn't work because Shikamaru's body temperature, even though he'd managed full corporeality, was only a little bit higher than the temperature of the air in the room. Neji nodded in understanding and pushed back against the fingers scissoring him open with a smile that felt a little cheeky. "Good thing I'm so hot, then."

That was possibly the flirtiest thing Neji had ever said in his entire life, and that included his roundabout way of asking Shikamaru to have sex with him. Shikamaru chuckled in response, giving one of Neji's cheeks a pat that bordered on the painful side of gentle with the hand that wasn't buried two fingers knuckle deep in his ass.

"I would agree with that sentiment." The phantom paused, then continued with a concerned expression. "Do you think you can take another yet, or…?"

Neji forced his body to relax, then nodded. "I can do another. So long as you're careful."

He almost wished he hadn't agreed when the intrusion came, so much larger than he expected even though it was the same size as the other two fingers inside him. Breathing hard through his nose for something else to focus on besides the pain, Neji dropped his head to mask his discomfort, but Shikamaru noticed anyway and paused.

"Too much?"

"A little," Neji admitted.

"No need to be embarrassed. Tell me what you need. I don't want to hurt you."

"I think… just a little time to adjust."

Shikamaru nodded, and Neji closed his eyes, focusing on his breathing to create a calming atmosphere for his body. It didn't hurt that much really; he'd broken bones before, and this was nothing compared to that. But it was still uncomfortable, and he forced his body to relax until it had gotten used to the intrusion. When the feeling of unnatural stretching decreased, he moved a little, which shifted the fingers inside of him.

"Are you good now?"

Neji bit his bottom lip. "I… I think so."

Smirking down at him, Shikamaru started to move his fingers again. "Maybe _this_ will help?"

 _Maybe_ what _will help?_ Neji wanted to ask, but the moment he opened his mouth to speak a loud moan reverberated out instead as Shikamaru's fingers brushed up against the spot inside of him that made stars burst in his vision. The discomfort Neji was feeling instantly disappeared, dwarfed by the magnitude of the pleasure coursing through his body. Shikamaru's fingers started to work again, but this time Neji didn't mind as they started to open him up further, stretching him just past the threshold of pain and holding there for a few seconds before relaxing again and brushing up against that spot inside his body. He went back to work on the cock bobbing in front of his nose and rocked back against the fingers inside him. Between the physical stimulation of that spot and the mental stimulation of having a piece of Shikamaru inside of his mouth, he was so absorbed in the moment that he only noticed when Shikamaru added a fourth finger by the chill of the new lube entering him.

Suddenly Shikamaru pushed his head away. For a moment, Neji's pleasure-addled brain didn't understand the rejection and he stared up at the phantom in hopeless confusion, but Shikamaru ran his free hand through his hair gently, pulling the strands that had become matted with saliva away from his mouth.

"You don't want to come like this, do you?" He said teasingly, withdrawing his fingers for emphasis and leaving Neji feeling empty. "Besides, I… well, I don't know how much energy I've got left in me, and I'd like to be able to finish with you."

Neji nodded and rocked back onto his heels, feeling like he looked mostly destroyed with his flushed skin and messy hair. His bottom half felt strange after the stretching, and he bet he would feel it in the morning, but now his body just ached to be filled.

"I'd like that too."

A smile cracked across the phantom's face, and Shikamaru pressed a gentle pressure in the center of Neji's chest to push him backwards until his shoulder hit the pillow. He made swift work of removing the boxers that were still tangled around Neji's knees, then laboriously pulled one of Neji's leg up until the ball of his foot pressed into the phantom's shoulder, a position which opened him up completely to the Shikamaru's gaze. Neji felt like he was being consumed by the phantom's eyes alone as Shikamaru just stared at him with hunger blatantly reflected on his face, heat racking his body from the intense pressure of the gaze. It rose up his body until he could scarcely breathe, tilting his chin back to gasp at the air in the room, suddenly stiflingly hot.

"Shikamaru… don't just look… I _need_ you…"

Shikamaru's grip on his thigh tightened at the words, and Neji hissed in pain as his nails dug into his flesh. But true to his request, Shikamaru stopped staring and leaned forward to grip Neji's other leg and pull it aside- not in the same position as the first one, since his foot rested on the bed with his knee bent instead of on the phantom's shoulder, but up enough that Neji felt his hips tilt forward, giving Shikamaru better access to press his own hips closer to the place he'd so laboriously worked open.

Neji was torn between closing his eyes in ecstasy when he felt the head of Shikamaru's cock nudge against his opening and watching the phantom's reaction as he began to push inside, but the decision was made for him when felt his eyes go involuntarily half-lidded, the outside world distorted through the curtain of his eyelashes but not dark. He bit his lip and hissed when the widest part of the head pushed against him, trying to gain purchase, but then it popped past the ring of muscle that was still a tight fit despite how much effort Shikamaru had spent opening him up, and Neji felt an unarticulated whine rise through his chest as Shikamaru began to slide home within his body.

He could tell when Shikamaru found himself fully seated inside his body by two things: the sensation of the phantom's thighs pressing directly into the back of his own, and the low groan the phantom let out when he bottomed out.

"Shit, Neji…"

Neji's breathing hitched, and he gripped at the wrist of the hand holding his hips steady. "Shika… maru…"

"What is it?" The phantom instantly stilled. "Is it too much? Should I-?"

"No!" With the force of the shout, Neji managed to propel his upper body forwards so he could grab onto the Shikamaru's shoulders, his foot slipping off his shoulder as he did so. Panting, he rested his chin on the phantom's collarbone and whined at how the movement made their lower bodies shift closer together. "It feels good… I need more…"

Shikamaru's hands traveled briefly up and down Neji's back before they settle on his ass, fingers splayed over his cheeks and gripping hard enough to squeeze the flesh between his digits. Shifting so that he was sitting upright and Neji could comfortable perch in his lap, one thigh on either side of the Shikamaru's, while retaining the grip he had on the phantom's shoulders, Shikamaru carefully raised Neji's body a fraction of an inch, then lowered it again.

"Like that?"

Nodding furiously, Neji tried to replicate the motion himself by bouncing a little, but the angle was off and he only succeeded in annoying himself. With a chuckle at Neji's impatience, Shikamaru repositioned his hands and started to slowly rock him up and down at the same time and he began to move his hips the opposite direction, culminating in a short but steady thrust that felt amazing. Neji felt his nails bite into the backs of Shikamaru's shoulders as he held on, doing his best to assist the phantom.

In a sudden rush of possessiveness, Neji leaned forward and pressed his mouth to the spot where Shikamaru had mark him before on the phantom's own neck, kissing it delicately before pressing his tongue to the spot and starting to suck. He wasn't the kind of person to use teeth, but he felt Shikamaru react to the pressure and when he pulled back to admire his handiwork, he was that it was just as dark as the bite the phantom had left on his own neck. Humming in pleasure at his success, Neji didn't notice when Shikamaru lifted his hips higher than normal until he slammed back down, his cock piercing him in one swift movement from shallow to deep and brushing across that magical bundle of nerves inside his body as it went.

Neji's mouth dropped open, and the only thing keeping him from crying out was the fact that his brain had short-circuited as soon as Shikamaru's dick had slammed home inside him. The force of the trust was enough to make a slapping sound from where the backs of Neji's thighs and the fronts of Shikamaru's connected, and Neji instinctually dragged himself up again and thrust back down, trying to replicate it.

Without the phantom's help, the angle again wasn't the best, but it was better than the first time and Neji used the power of his legs and the hands on the phantom's shoulders to drag himself up and down several more times before Shikamaru saw fit to assist again and thrust up into him as Neji was coming down. White stars exploded behind Neji's vision, and he heard himself begging unabashedly for more.

"Please, Shikamaru, do that again!"

Shikamaru moved one of his hands from Neji's ass to the back of his neck, burying it amidst the long strands of hair, as he helped Neji up again, then thrust up inside him as he came back down with all the force his battle-hardened thighs possessed. Arching his back into the contact, Neji reciprocated with all of his might until they had built up a steady rhythm that was at once comfortable and extremely satisfying.

The hand on the back of Neji's neck tightened and pulled him in for a messy kiss, teeth banging together and tongues getting caught between them as their bodies shifted in a steady flow against the other's movement. Neji pressed his body tighter against Shikamaru's, moving as closer as he could, so he could feel his own neglected cock brush against the harsh angles of the phantom's toned stomach. In response, Shikamaru gave up the control he had over Neji's movement and instead brought the hand that had been seated against his ass between them to jerk along his length, adding another layer to the pleasure coursing through Neji's body.

Neither one of them were loud people by nature, so it made sense that the same extended to their love-making. The only sounds that echoed through the room - even when they weren't connected at the mouth, stifling any noise they might make - was their harsh breathing and the occasional grunt or growl that was soon cut off, but Neji liked it that way. They weren't focusing on acting, on making noise and telling each other every ten seconds how they felt. They were focused instead on each other, the other's presence the only constant in their world and the only thing they were sure existed.

A sudden deeper thrust rocked Neji's body, and he felt the beginnings of something familiar bubbling up in his stomach.

"Shikamaru, I'm-" he tried to warn the phantom, but Shikamaru kissed him again, silencing the words.

Instead, Neji made his point with his body as his knees suddenly failed to do what he had told them to do and he faltered in his rhythm, throwing them out of sync. Understanding what Neji was trying to get across, Shikamaru seamlessly flipped them over without breaking either the contact of their mouths or their hips and pushed his thighs wide to thrust harder. The authority of his movement now taken out of his own hands, Neji could only let himself feel as Shikamaru pushed inside him again and again, each thrust like a brand proclaiming them united. His back arched uncontrollably and he reached down to grab two fistfulls of Shikamaru's spectral buttocks, kneading them between his fingers as the phantom pushed inside him again and again.

Soon the thrusts started slowing, but each individual one became harder and the hand jerking Neji off quickened at the same time, sending disjointed rounds of pleasure through his body that built at an unsteady but quick rate. Each harsh roll of Shikamaru's hips pressed past that small bundle of nerves inside of Neji that brought so much pleasure, until with one final thrust he burst apart almost unexpectedly. A think spurt of cum shot out of the end of Neji's dick and sprayed between them, a little bit hitting Shikamaru's stomach but most of it landing on his own. The force of his orgasm was so strong that the world faded away for several seconds, and Neji only realized that Shikamaru was still hard inside of him when he came back down to earth.

There was a look of concentration on the phantom's face as he set a faster pace for himself, and Neji could tell that he was close as well. Something was off, though, and as Neji felt himself coming down from his orgasm-induced high, the expression on the phantom's face became more reminiscent of worry.

"Shikamaru, is there something wrong?"

"I don't… don't know if I can…" The phantom panted, and Neji squeezed his sides reassuringly.

"Yes, you can. You've already done the hard part."

A sudden roll of Shikamaru's hips made Neji hiss, he looked up to see that the phantom had leaned back and was looking at him with an expression full-blown desire on his face. Neji smiled up at him and ran a hand down his chest. "You can, Shikamaru. I believe you can."

The pupils of Shikamaru's eyes blew wide, and his steady rhythm stuttered. "Should I…? Outside?"

Ever though his body was starting to feel over sensitive, Neji shook his head desperately. "No, I want to feel you, I want you to come inside me-"

Those words were all it took and Shikamaru slammed home inside of him with one final thrust, spilling deep inside him. It wasn't as hot as his own cum, but it still filled him with a lazy warmth as the phantom collapsed on top of him, spent. Sitting up dislodged Shikamaru's dick from inside him and he hissed at the sensation, feeling a few drips of spectral cum dribble out of his ass before they vanished. He ached at the loss of contact for a few seconds, but then the phantom's lips found his and they kissed lazily for a few moments, their bodies exhausted but satisfied.

If Neji had thought that he looked destroyed before, it was probably nothing compared to what he looked like now. He stifled a quiet laugh at the thought, and Shikamaru pulled back to watch his expression with an amused stare.

"What's so funny?"

"I was just thinking about how much of a mess I must look right now," Neji admitted.

"Mm." Shikamaru came back in, resting his cheek against Neji's neck and drawing his hands down the sides of his body. "That you do. A thoroughly claimed, extremely satisfied and unfairly hot mess."

Neji tilted his head to the side, letting his hair slide over the phantom's shoulder. "I could say the same about yourself."

"Maybe, but you should probably save it for after you fuck me as hard as I just fucked you."

The breath caught in Neji's throat. Of course, Shikamaru had offered for Neji to make the decision earlier, but he'd been so absorbed in the moment that he hadn't really realized what he was saying. Shikamaru want him both ways, wanted to claim Neji and wanted Neji to claim him in return. Neji knew that with the expectations of his family, particularly after his betrothal with Hinata was announced, he wouldn't be allowed any of what they dubbed "messing around", but in the face of the complete unabashedness of Shikamaru's wants, he found himself wanting it too.

"I think… I'd like that."

A grin split Shikamaru's face, and he leaned in for another quick kiss. This time, it was only a chaste press of lips before he pulled back, though the smile was still there.

"We should probably get you cleaned off. Can you walk to the bathroom on your own?"

"Of course I can _walk_ ; I'm not an invalid."

As it turned out, Neji was not able to walk to the bathroom on his own, and he'd had to have Shikamaru half-carry, half-float him most of the way. The phantom had cleaned the cooling cum off his stomach with a damp washcloth, then brought him back to bed and tucked them both in together. The last thing Neji remembered before he drifted off into a sleepy post-coital haze was the sensation of curling up against a familiar, slightly cool chest and a feeling of security that came from being cared for, a feeling that he hadn't felt it years.


	37. Tangential Disaster

Thank you all for the compliments on the lemon! I hope you all had as much fun reading it as I had writing it.

Unfortunately for our wonderful couple, however, there are still a lot of unresolved issues to overcome and things must get worse before they can get better. Forward we march!

* * *

"Good morning, beautiful."

Neji was awoken by these words and the kiss of the morning sun through his window on his temple, followed soon after by an actual kiss from the lips of the ghost he was snuggled up against. With a contented him, he relaxed into the contact as he blinked his eyes open.

The first thing he saw when his vision relaxed into wakefulness was the chessboard and pieces scattered about his bedroom floor, along with the suitcase he'd never unpacked, and Neji pushed himself into a sitting position with a groan. "My room is a mess. I need to clean it up before Hinata stops by for her next lesson."

The arms around him tightened a little at the mention of Hinata, though Shikamaru kept his tone light. "' _Well, good morning to you too, Shikamaru. How are you doing today, you handsome devil, you?_ '"

Neji gave him a baleful look from underneath his lashes. "I would never utter those words in my life."

Tapping on Neji's bottom lip with a long index finger, Shikamaru gave a fake pout. "So I don't get a good morning?"

The mock severity in Neji's glare was only able to last for a few more seconds before he dissolved into quiet giggles and pressed his lips against the ghost's for a quick kiss. "I'm sorry, Shikamaru. _It's such a beautiful morning when I have such a wonderful face to wake up to_. There, is that better?"

"Much, thank you."

Shikamaru kissed Neji again, longer and slower this time, and Neji felt like his insides were melted by the time he pulled away regretfully.

"As nice as this is, I do have things I need to accomplish today. You're welcome to stick around, though."

"Oh, don't worry; I was planning on it."

And stick around he did. The ghost was absolutely no help in cleaning up the destroyed game of chess on the floor, despite the fact that he could literally just snap his fingers and be done with it, and no, Neji was not salty about that, not at all, though he did quiet graciously bring Neji some Aspirin when he had first tried to take a step and ended up on his already sore ass on the ground. He also seemed to think that Neji getting dressed was a bad idea, and for every button Neji managed to get done when he was doing up his shirt two more would mysteriously pop open until he had to ban Shikamaru from the bathroom so he could make himself presentable for the day.

When Neji finally got around to unpacking his suitcase, after multiple distractions from his spectral companion including several instances of groping ranging from light to extremely heavy and one long, very satisfying make-out session, he had to sigh as again, he found a pair of almost-insubstantial arm wrapped around his waist.

"Shikamaru, you do know that I have to get this done, right?"

"And I preventing you from doing that?" Came the muffled reply near his ear.

"Not yet, but the last time this happened - which was about fifteen minutes ago, don't forget - I ended up half undressed again, and I am trying to do things besides you."

Shikamaru let out a hearty chuckle. "Was than an innuendo? From _you_?"

Feeling his cheeks warm, Neji redoubled his efforts at folding his semi-clean laundry and packing it away in the drawers that were already full. "Maybe. What of it?"

"Oh, nothing." Shikamaru pressed his mouth against the side of Neji's neck. "Just that you're too adorable for your own good. You do know that you just put your dressshirt in your underwear drawer, right?"

With a silent swear, Neji pulled the shirt from the drawer and move to hang it up in his closet where it belonged. Throughout his journey, Shikamaru tugged on his collar plaintively.

"Come on, can't I get just a little kiss?"

"The problem is it won't be 'just a little kiss' if you're involved."

Neji turned around to make his way back to his suitcase, but suddenly found himself face to face with a pouting smile. "Not even if I promise to be good?"

In the face of Shikamaru's pouting insistence, Neji felt his resistance melting away. "Okay, fine. As long as it's just a little one."

Humming in pleased approval, Shikamaru leaned forward and carefully reached his hand between Neji's neck and his hair, then pressed their mouths together. The kiss started off chaste, then quickly deepened as Shikamaru coaxed Neji's mouth open and their tongues collided in a sensual dance. Neji found himself pressed backwards until his back hit the wall, then Shikamaru's body pressed into his own from shoulder to thigh, and he could feel the ghost's reaction to anything he did through his entire body.

This was a little more than "just a little kiss" now, but Neji couldn't bring himself to care. Hell, if Shikamaru asked, he'd probably pull his pants down right now, bend over against the wall, and let the ghost fuck him senseless again. As if sensing the direction of Neji's thoughts, Shikamaru thumbed against the edge of his waistband, and Neji shivered in response.

Okay, so that was probably what was going to happen now.

Neji was so absorbed in the ghost in front of him that he almost didn't hear his front door open and close. He only realized that something was truly wrong when Shikamaru pulled away quickly.

"There's someone coming towards us."

"Wha- what?!"

For a moment, the words didn't register in Neji's brain, then his eyes widened and he tried to create some distance between himself and Shikamaru, but by then it was too late and his bedroom door creaked open to reveal the one person he'd hoped to never see him like this.

* * *

Hinata had gone to Neji's apartment that morning with the two-fold intention of inquiring how his trip had been and asking him about something that had been bothering her lately. Most of the elders on the council usually avoided speaking or even looking at her whenever they passed her in the hallways of the Hyuuga compound, but now they had taken to greeting her by name and smiling in a way she couldn't help feeling was slightly predatory. If anyone would know what was going on, it would be her big brother Neji, because Neji was smart and knew everything.

He didn't answer when she knocked on the door, but Hinata had a key, so it was easy enough to get in. The door opened silently on well-maintained hinges, and Hinata suddenly got the idea to surprise her cousin. She'd never been able to do it before - minus the time she'd accidentally done it the day Neji had slept in - so she figured this time would be no different, but perhaps she could get close. She snuck through first the kitchen and then the living room on her tiptoes, being careful to avoid any excess noise as she approached the only closed door that she could see: his bedroom door.

Hinata only got the feeling that this might be a bad idea, to break into someone's bedroom while they were perhaps standing unsuspecting inside it when she was almost to his room, but by then she could hear the voices inside the room, making out Neji's unique voice in a panicked timbre mixed with the calmer tones of a deeper voice. The sound instantly sent shivers down her spine and set her already strung nerves on edge; why was Neji panicking? And who else was in there with him?

She placed a shaking hand on the doorknob, wondering if she had the confidence to follow through with opening it. If she turned around right now, she could walk out the door, lock it behind her, and then text Neji to let him know that she was coming, giving him time to sort out whatever this situation was before seeing her. Then again, if the situation was reversed, Neji would have barged into her room without pause. Hinata's hand tightened on the doorknob, the action causing the shaking of her arm to ease somewhat. When was she going to stop relying on Neji for everything and start relying on herself?

After taking a deep breath to steady herself, Hinata turned the knob and opened the door.

And then immediately wished she hadn't as she beheld one of the most terrifying scenes she had ever seen, and one that she would never be able to forget as long as she lived.

Neji, her beloved big brother, was in the arms of somebody else. And, to add insult to injury, it was a man- no, a _ghost_ , and one with an air of familiarity around him once she looked closer. A jolt of fear racked her body and stole its basic functions away, making it impossible for her to either fight or flee.

Neji was in the process of disentangling himself from the ghost's embrace when Hinata opened the door, but that didn't make it any less obvious what they had been doing. His cheeks were flushed, but they paled when he locked eyes with her. Desperately, he tried to push the ghost away from him, but he wouldn't let go, his fingers gripping Neji's arm tight enough to bruise as he fixed Hinata with a glare that would have sent her running if she could convince her legs to move, a glare that was tinged with… jealousy?

"Wait! Hinata! I can explain-!" Neji tried to cry, reaching for her, but before he could get the rest if his sentence out, the ghost grabbed him and kissed him right in front of Hinata, his cold gaze locked with hers as if to say, _See this? He's mine now._

It was then, with his dark, soulless eyes locked on hers, that Hinata finally recognized him: it was Shikamaru, one of the phantoms they had met while working in Konoha. But since he was now in Seattle, that immediately changed his classification. Phantoms, because they were a subspecies of specter, couldn't move from the place they haunted, let alone travel across the country as they pleased. The only ghost that could was a wraith.

Neji shoved the ghost with an angry shout, though it didn't make him loosen his grip on Neji's arm, then turned to Hinata. "What the hell do you think you're doing, Shikamaru? Hinata, please listen to me-!"

But Hinata didn't react; she was too shocked by her recognition of the ghost for anything else. Then, all of a sudden, a shiver of pure, abject terror it hit her, and she screamed, loud and piercing into the low hum of panic in the room. Neji reared back and punched the ghost right in the jaw to make him let go, then stumbled across the room to Hinata, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her.

"Hinata! This isn't-! I mean-!"

Hinata instinctively slapped his hands away before she knew what she was doing. She almost immediately wished she hadn't after seeing his hurt expression, then just as immediately was glad that she had again. Curling on herself and away from him, she spat a few hurt words at him, a little surprised that her stutter was calm enough to let her speak.

"H-how could you, M-Neji?! Can't you t-tell? He's a wraith!"

"I know!" Neji cried suddenly, then his shoulders slumped, his gaze dropping to the floor as if he was unable to meet her eyes, and he continued in a softer tone. "How could I not know?"

"You knew? For how long?"

The words came from the ghost hovering in the center of the room, his face suddenly twisted into a strange expression.

"Since you first showed up in Seattle," Neji admitted, his gaze still on the floor in front of him. "I always said that I was smarter than you gave me credit for, Shikamaru."

Hinata flinched at the name. "I c-can't do this," she whispered, starting to shake as Neji finally looked up at her. "I c-c-c-c-can't-t s-s-s-see y-you with-th h-h-him-m-m-"

"Hinata!" Neji grabbed her shoulders again, panic starting to seep into his voice as he realized she was having another attack. "Calm down; I know you can do it! Just breathe-!"

But again, Hinata pushed his hands away. "DON'T TOUCH ME!" She screamed, and this time it was Neji's turn to flinch back. He stared at her, openmouthed, for a few seconds, and then Hinata couldn't take it anymore; she had to get out of there. She turned and fled without checking to see if Neji was following her, terrified that he would, terrified that he wouldn't, and unsure which she was more scared of.

* * *

It was quiet in the room after Hinata stormed out, the calm before the inevitable typhoon. Neji stared out the door behind her, unable to look at the phantom - no, the wraith - behind him.

"Why did you do that?" He asked in a deceptively quiet tone that hid the exact amount of anger currently swirling inside him.

"Do what?"

Neji's teeth came together with an audible snap. "You know _exactly_ what I'm talking about. You chased her away. Marked what you saw as your territory like filthy animal. _Why did you do that_?!"

His voice rose in volume until Shikamaru spun him around so they were face to face.

"You fucking know, Neji, don't pretend like you don't! Come on, you tell me why I kissed you in front of your cousin!"

"Jealousy is not a good enough reason!" Neji exploded. "She's a child, Shikamaru!"

"Yeah, a child you care about more than you care for me! It's not that easy! How am I supposed to feel, huh? You tell me!"

"I don't-!" Neji stopped, then shook his head and took a step back, away from Shikamaru. "I always told you that Hinata was important to me, Shikamaru, and that if you ever made me choose between the two of you, I would choose her in a heartbeat. Well, that time has come. You've made your mistake. I'm going after her, and you better be gone by the time I get back. I don't want to see you ever again."

Then Neji turned on his heel and stalked out the door, leaving behind him a shell-shocked tactician who was wondering where he had miscalculated.

* * *

Neji ran down the stairs leading up to his door in his apartment complex after his cousin, but by the time he got to the bottom, Hinata was nowhere to be seen.

"Hinata! HINATA!"

There was no response, not that he'd expected much of one. Neji swivelled his head back and forth as he gazed down both parts of his street, unsure which route he should take. The left was the way she had probably come, as it led back to the Hyuuga compound, and the other direction was, to her, an unknown path. Knowing her dislike of uncertainty, under normal circumstances Neji would have guessed that she would have headed back the way she had came, but these were clearly anything but normal circumstances.

Neji turned to the right and ran down the road, searching desperately for any sign of his cousin.

"Hinata! Please, where are you?"

He found her on a bench a few minutes away, having run until her untrained legs couldn't take any more and collapsed with her face in her hands. Neji was out of breath by the time he reached her, and he had to double over and rasp for air in front of her.

"Hi… Hina… ta…"

Her face was streaked with tears when she looked up at the sound of his voice, and Neji felt like the sight ripped a hole in his chest large enough to yank his heart out and hold it triumphantly aloft.

"G-go away," she hiccuped, curling up on the bench and hiding her face in arms again.

But Neji kneeled down in front of her and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. She flinched away from it at first, but eventually allowed him to rub soothing circles on her back.

"Hinata, you know that I love you," he said after a few minutes of tremulous silence broken only by the sound of Hinata's sniffling. "More than anything else in this world, I love you, and nothing will ever change that. Alright?"

Hinata said something, but it was muffled by her arms.

"Hinata, sweetheart, I can't understand you when you do that."

Pulling her face out of her arms, Hinata sobbed, "B-b-but you were w-with hi-him!"

"Oh, sweetheart." Neji reached forward to enfold Hinata in his arms, and this time she came willingly, clutching at his shoulders and sobbing into his shirt. His collar soon turned to a wet mess, but he just kept rubbing those soothing circles against her back. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you."

Hinata made a kind of choking sound, then threw her arms around his neck. The rest of her body fell off the bench and followed into Neji's lap, and he held her as she cried herself out in his arms.

When the tears finally slowed, Neji gave her a gentle pat on the back. "Do you feel better now?"

"N-no." She clutched him a little tighter. "How c-could you d-do that? He- he's a w-wr-wraith, N-Neji!"

"I know." Neji pressed his face into her hair. It smelled faintly of the shampoo she had always used, clean and comforting. "I know. I didn't mean for this to happen, Hinata; it just did. Sometimes we break the rules without knowing what they are." He took a deep breath; the next words hurt him to say, now that his initial anger had worn off. "And if it makes you feel better, I'm not going to see him again."

"It d-doesn't make m-me f-feel b-better! That-t doesn't m-make any sense! S-stop talking in rid-dles as if that w-would solve th-things!"

There was no way to make Hinata understand why Neji had done what he'd done, because he didn't understand it himself. The brief affair he'd had with the ghost had been illogical, taxing, and painful at times. And yet, it had also shown Neji the warmest passion he'd ever felt in his life. His heart clenched just think about it, but he forced himself to push aside his feelings with a shake of his head. He'd already said goodbye to Shikamaru; with everything that he knew was coming for him, it was an inevitability, and it was probably for the better that it had come now and the break had been clean.

Luckily, Neji was spared from having to explain all this to Hinata by an obnoxious ringing that interrupted their silence. It took a few moments for Neji to recognize it as his ringtone because he'd forgotten that his phone was already in his pocket when he'd stormed out of his apartment. When he did, he pulled it out and answered it without looking at the caller ID, still cradling Hinata against his chest with his other arm.

"Seattle File Operator Neji Hyuuga speaking. How can I help you?"

"Ah, Neji." The voice on the other end of the phone was clipped, professional. Neji didn't recognize him. "I'm calling on the behalf of the Council of Elders. They'd like to schedule an appointment with you."

"Certainly." Neji shifted so he could get a better angle to hear. He'd rather do anything but meet with the Elders right now, but it wasn't like he was in any position to refuse the not with the his recent transgressions leaving a huge stain on his otherwise perfect record. "How soon would they like it? I'm rather busy the next few days catching up on work that I missed while traveling, but I'm sure I could squeeze something in-"

"Now."

"Ex… excuse me?"

"Now," the voice clarified. "They want to see you now."

The tone said that they weren't planning on taking no for an answer. Neji had to swallow down an unnecessary retort. "I'll be there as soon as I can. I'm with Hinata right now, so as soon as I get her settled, I'll head right over."

"You're with her? Excellent. She was next on my list to call. The Elders want to see you two together."

Neji blanched. They wanted to meet with both of them together? That could only mean one thing: the time to tell Hinata the truth had finally come.

It was probably a good thing that he'd already said goodbye to Shikamaru, then.

"Understood. Both of us will be there as soon as possible."


	38. What You Stand to Gain

The crash of the heavy door echoed through the big, empty room, bereft of its normal sound-absorbing crown. Like for Neji's interrogation, there were only six elders seated at a table near the bottom of the dais, including the foreboding face of his grandfather in the center, staring directly at Neji and Hinata. He swallowed and forced his weak knees to carry his weight forward, bringing himself closer to the sentence waiting for him. He'd been getting away with far too much for far too long now, and it long overdue for it to all come crashing down on his head.

Hinata had frozen behind Neji as soon as the doors had boomed shut behind them, but when he began to move forward, she started with an almost imperceptible squeak and ran forward several steps to catch up to her cousin. It was Neji's turn to start when he felt her hand sneak softly into the center of his palm. Even when she was still angry at him, she always came to her Big Brother for protection. Neji gave her hand a quick squeeze in reassurance before dropping it when they reached the center of the room. She whimpered slightly at the loss of contact and Neji ached to take her hand again, but he knew better than to show any kind of weakness in front of the elders.

Together, Neji and HInata came forward until one of the elders held up a hand to stop them.

"That's close enough."

They stopped, not daring to draw even a single inch closer to the table. Hinata, shaking slightly, refused to step out fully from behind Neji, and he forced himself with gritted teeth to move to the side and expose her to the calculating eyes of the elders. She shivered under their cold gazes, and again Neji had to fight the urge to step back in front of her in a protective gesture, but, like before, he knew any show of weakness or affection would only make their situation worse.

To his surprise, Neji heard Hinata take a deep breath, then step forward to stand on his level. Out of the corner of his peripheral vision, he saw that her chin was trembling, but her head was high and her shoulders squared. Despite the situation, Neji had to smile briefly, especially at the mutters from the table of elders; Hinata was stronger than they thought she was.

The quiet swirl of conversation from the elders quickly died out, and their grandfather raised a hand in greeting to them.

"Afternoon, Neji, Hinata. Thank you both for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice."

 _As if we had a choice,_ the snide voice in the back of Neji's mind spoke up, but he wisely chose not to repeat the words out loud.

Instead, he bowed his head, and saw Hinata next to him do the same. "It was no trouble, Lord Hyuuga."

"Y-yes, no trouble, L-Lord Hyuuga," Hinata echoed.

"We are certainly glad you feel this way," their grandfather said warmly. "And please, there's no need for such formality, either of you."

Neji bowed his head even lower. "Yes, Grandfather."

After a brief glance to the side, Hinata echoed her cousin again, albeit with a little more hesitation in her words. "Y-yes, G-Grandfather."

 _So that's how this was going to be._

"We've brought you here to discuss a decision the Council has come to a consensus on recently," their grandfather continued. "We plan to announce the decision shortly - within the week, in fact - but since it impacts both of you, we decided that it would be best to inform the two of you ahead of time, and in a more intimate setting."

Neji felt Hinata stiffen next to him in fear and uncertainty, and he felt a muscle tic in his jaw. _Of course_ they would phrase it like that, knowing it would make her more nervous. He had already guessed the "big decision" they had decided to reveal to them, however, and the knowledge filled him with hopelessness rather than nerves.

The Elder gestured to the woman sitting next to him to continue where he had left off. She was a shorter, slightly pudgy grey-haired old lady, reminding Neji of what he imagined a kindly grandmother to look like, despite never meeting either of his own. Her softly sagging cheeks trembled gently when she spoke, the smile on her lips matching the twinkle in her eye.

"As you may or may not know, I am in charge of the subcommittee tasked with arranging marriages between members of our more prominent branches of the family to ensure maximum success in both forwarding the future generation of our clan and the compatibility of the couple. Despite your close blood ties and some… internal debate…" Here, her gaze flickered towards Neji for a moment, and her eyes lost a little bit of their sparkle, "...we have decided to form a union between the two of you! Congratulations on your engagement, both of you."

The others around the table joined her in murmuring their congratulations, and a few even deigned them with a smattering of light applause, but all Neji could see was the face of his grandfather, the older man's eyes boring steadily into his own. A small smile of congratulations played about his mouth as he inclined his head in Neji's direction, but all Neji could focus on was the smugness behind it, reminding him that he had finally, truly and utterly, lost. He had fought an insurmountable battle for years, and it had all culminated in this one moment of utter failure for him, and complete triumph for the elders. Feeling anything but the happiness he was expected to feel, Neji couldn't even bring himself to force a fake smile onto his face, and his fists clenched at his sides as his vision became tinged with red. A twinge went up his spine as his stance shifted, bring with it the reminder as to exactly why he'd woken up with a slight limp that morning. Sudden memories of dark eyes and barely-warm hands brought a wave of heat to his cheeks, but he wasn't sure whether the implications of what might have been, what he could have had if he hadn't been born into this family and this line, added to his sense of hopelessness or fueled his rage.

Neji was so deafened to the outside world by his inner monologue that he almost missed HInata's grateful gasp.

"Oh, th-thank you!"

Neji glanced at her in shock; there was no way she was okay with this, right? And yet, there she stood, body completely drained of the tension that had plagued her before and hands clasped in reverent thanks.

"I was s-so worried that this was going to be s-something bad, but this is… this is…" She turned to Neji with a sparkle in her eyes. "Isn't it p-perfect, Neji? I was so afraid that they'd s-separate us and I'd never see you again, but n-now we won't have to leave each other and we'll be together forever and…" Her smile faltered when she saw the flat look on Neji's face. "Neji, wh-what's wrong?"

Neji felt the heavy gazes of the elders all resting on him, even though he was no longer looking at them. This, he knew, was the main event, the real reason why they had both been called in at the same time, and in front of the smaller group instead of the whole Elder's Council. He was conflicted- on one hand, Neji wanted to rant, to rage at his fate, but not in front of Hinata. Never in front of Hinata. His sweet little cousin didn't deserve any of this.

It was for this reason that he closed his eyes before addressing her.

"Perfect? You're _happy_? How can you be so accepting of something as terrible as this?"

"T-terrible?" Hinata gasped, but Neji still couldn't bring himself to look at her; he turned back to the elders' table before opening his eyes.

"This is punishment for what happened in New York, isn't it?"

None of the elders eve blinked at his question. "You're punishment for your transgressions and poor judgement in New York has already been carried out," his grandfather said shortly, but the words sounded suspiciously wooden to Neji's ears. Robotic, as if they'd been practiced one too many times.

"P-punishm-ment?"

Against his better judgement, Neji instinctively looked behind him to see Hinata's shocked and hurt face, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.

"Its a p-punishment for you t-to have to b-be around m-me? It's a p-punishment for you to… to…?" She whispered, a single tear trickling down her cheek.

Neji's body was already in motion before he had consciously given it the order to move, doing what it had instinctively done for years and extending comfort to his baby cousin. He caught Hinata and crushed her to his chest, his hand automatically smoothing down her hair.

"No, no," he instantly refused, hoping that his physical affection could tell her what his convoluted words could not. "No, being with you is never a punishment. Taking away our autonomy, however, is."

"Preposterous," the grey-haired elder in charge of marriage arrangement snapped, the grandmotherly sense fading from her aura. "This decision did not take away your autonomy; you never had any in this matter to begin with. That is what you gave up when you were born Hyuuga. It is for the good of the clan."

"Even those politicians and lawmakers you love to quote against us when you fought our decision would support us in this regard," another added. "Wasn't a President who said, 'Ask not what your clan can do for you, but what you can do for your clan'?"

Neji felt a muscle jump in his jaw as he stared at the table over the top of Hinata's head. He knew the quote, just like he knew the President who had said it, though it was likely none of the elders before him could name who it was, despite the fact that some of them had been alive when he had been assassinated. But there was, at least to Neji, a vast difference between "clan" and the original "country".

Neji had assumed that Hinata wasn't listening hard enough to the elders' words to pick up on any subtleties, but when she stiffened in his arms he realized that assumption was woefully false.

"You f-fought this, Neji?" She asked, her lower lip trembling.

Neji knew her well enough to hear the question underneath her question, what she actually wanted to know: if he had known about the decision before her.

"Yes," he answered to both her spoken and unspoken squestions, unable to lie to her despite how he knew it would break her heart. "I've known for… a while now. And I've been fighting it since they first told me."

Hinata took a deep breath and stepped backwards, breaking all contact with Neji. "H-how long?"

"Hinata…" Neji reached for her, but she slapped his hand away with surprising vehemence.

"HOW LONG!" She screamed, the words echoing around the empty room like ricocheting shrapnel, solid and sure.

Neji couldn't help it; his mouth dropped open as the last remnants of the perfect words disappeared into the high-vaulted ceiling. All the years she'd suffered, everything they'd tried together, and it was fury that drove her voice to overcome itself? Forgetting for a moment their audience and argument itself, Neji felt a flush of pride creep through his body, and he answered her question without thought as to how she would react.

"Just after my eighteenth birthday, so three years now."

"Three years…?" Hinata asked in quiet shock, then anger radiated from her features again. "You've known about this for three years and you never told me? When you knew how scared I was for the future, when you knew how desperate I was for even the tiniest hint of what the plan was for me? Why didn't you tell me?!"

Against his better judgement, a fist of anger clenched around Neji's heart. "Would you have wanted to know _this_?" He retorted furiously, throwing a hand out to the side as if to encompass the both of them.

"Yes!"

"Would you _really_?"

"Of course I would! Anything is better than not knowing!"

"Well, I'd give anything go back to the time before I knew! I _hate_ everything about this!"

The words were out of Neji's mouth before he could consider their ramifications, echoing through the courtroom like a sonic shockwave. For a moment, Neji's breath caught in his throat and he wanted to take the words back, but then he caught sight of the blank looks on the elders' faces and his anger flared once again. He advanced on Hinata, who backed away from him in fear until her back hit the wall. She let out a terrified squeak at the impact and then another one as Neji's arm slammed into the wall over her head, boxing her in as he towered over her with a thunderous expression.

Something he'd been treasureing for the better part of a decade broke inside Neji when he saw Hinata's expression of fear, but the void left behind by its loss was quickly replaced by a viciousness he'd never felt before.

"Don't you _dare_ complain to me about protecting your innocence!" He seethed into her face, ignoring the tears starting to gather in her eyes. "You have no idea of the magnitude of things I've done for you, what I've given up _for you_! While you were too scared to do anything for yourself, I was the only fighting all your battles for you! You have no idea of the pain I've gone through to keep you safe!"

"B-but why?" Hinata cried, the tears freeing themselves from her eyes to drip down her cheeks, and Neji felt a wave of vicious pride mixed with heartache when he noticed that her stutter had returned.

"Because I thought I could get the decision reversed before you ever had to find out, but obviously that worked out as well as a mute canary in a coal mine full of poisonous gases!"

Hinata let out a choked sob. "Wh-why? Why reverse it-t? Because you h-hated the thought of l-looking after a use- useless ch-child like m-me for the r-rest of your l-life?"

Her heartbroken tone cooled Neji's anger somewhat, though it still burned underneath his skin. "No, Hinata. I loved you like a sister, and I still do; nothing will ever change that. But I cannot love you in the way they're asking me."

Hinata his her face in her hands. Neji didn't try to pull her attention back to him; she would face him again when she was ready, and he wouldn't force her before then. To his surprise, however, when she finally uncovered her face, she glared up at him with a vicious hatred he'd never seen on her face before.

"You don't love me anymore because you don't need me anymore!" She spat vehemently, her eyes flashing darker than he'd ever seen them. "You don't need me because you have _him_."

The pronoun was spit at Neji containing so much hatred - a tone he'd _never_ heard in Hinata's voice before - that for a second, all he could do was stare back at her, blinking in confusion. The anger visibly sparking in her eyes curled her hands into fists at her sides. Who was the "him" that inspired such emotion in her?

Then it hit him, and he felt like an idiot. Of course it was Shikamaru that was driving a wedge between himself and Hinata; when had it ever not been? A dim coal of smouldering anger ignited in Neji's stomach, somewhere in between his sore backside and traitorous heart, which beat faster at just the thought of the ghost.

From between gritted teeth, Neji growled, "You leave him out of this. He has no business in our family's affairs."

Hinata's eyes were hard as they stared back up at him. "Just like he had no business being in your apartment this morning, is that right?"

Neji heard the seated council behind him shift in interest for the first time since the start of his and Hinata's argument. A slight bloom of panic erupted in Neji's chest; despite the fact that he'd washed his hands of Shikamaru - and for good this time - it didn't mean that he wanted to hand him over to the tender mercies of the Hyuuga family claws.

"Yes," he quickly snapped, and her cold eyes suddenly grew a little confused.

"That's not what it looked like to me."

How ironic, Neji thought, that is was these words that broke his resolve out everything that had been said in that argument. Unable to meet Hinata's gaze any longer, he glanced away from her face, then pulled away completely. She leaned away from the wall as soon as Neji's body was no longer blocking her range of motion. Grimacing, Neji pressed a hand to the center of his forehead. This didn't feel right! What was wrong with him?

"Well, Neji," Hinata whispered, the quiet sounds cutting through the silence of the room as easily as her earlier shout had. "I thought - I thought that - that you were the one thing I would never be af-fraid of."

The bottom dropped out of Neji's stomach when he heard her stutter again, and he swallowed with difficulty. She was looking down at the ground as she spoke, refusing to let anyone else see her face.

"But c-congrat-tulations-s, Neji. You p-prov-ved m-me wrong-g."

Hinata turned on her heel and ran from the room as soon as she finished speaking, and though Neji reached out desperately after her, he knew better than to call out. The heavy door boomed shut behind her, and Neji winced. She'd left the room before being dismissed, a huge breach of etiquette that she was likely to be punished for. If he even allowed her to serve the punishment instead of taking it on himself, as he always did. Even the argument the two had shared wasn't enough to persuade him to abandon his self-appointed post as Hinata's personal champion. It was far too ingrained in his soul to give it up now.

"How rude," he heard someone from the table behind him mutter.

 _Here we go again. I've gotten rather good at these in the past few weeks,_ Neji thought disparagingly as he took a deep breath and turned around with a plastic smile and slightly bowed head.

"I apologize for the actions of my cousin-"

"Fiancée," the grey-haired elder in charge of marriages corrected. Neji's teeth snapped together with an audible click.

"Fiancée," he allowed, though the word tasted like ashes in his mouth. "I apologize for her behavior. As her primary tutor, I have been lax in my duty of teaching her discipline. This is my oversight, not hers. I will gladly bear the burden for her mistake in her stead and fix her tutelage accordingly."

"I would think so," the same elder who had grumbled against Hinata's actions earlier muttered again, earning rumbles of appreciation from his peers.

All except for Neji's grandfather, who was still staring at him with a contemplative expression.

"You know, Neji," he said slowly, a small frown gracing his lips, "if you keep allowing her to rely on you like this, she will never learn to protect herself.

 _I wouldn't have to protect her if you did place such unreasonable demands on her!_ Neji inwardly seethed, but didn't allow any of his anger to show on his face. Instead, he just replied calmly, "With all due respect, Grandfather, I don't think she's capable at this point in time."

"And if you keep treating her like that, I doubt she will ever be."

Neji bit the inside of his cheek to keep responding in a way that he'd regret later. Stiffly, he bowed his head so he wouldn't have to look his grandfather in the eye.

"No punishment will be served," the Elder continued after a beat of silence. "It was a first-time offense from a child who didn't know any better. I will speak with her myself about it. This meeting is adjourned."

Neji deepened his bow as the elders stood up from the table, shuffling and talking amongst themselves. He only straightened up when they started to trail away from the room in catting pairs or silent individuals, delaying his return to verticality until the last possible second so he wouldn't have to meet their eyes. Only the last few stragglers were still making their way out of the courtroom through a door only accessible to elders when Neji turned on his heel and headed to the door he could exit, hiding his turbulent emotions behind a stony mask until he could find a more private place to let the mask slip. He was almost to the door, his hard reaching for the door handle, when someone called out to him.

"One moment, Neji. I'd like a private word with you; is that alright?"

Was it conceivable that anyone would deny the Lord Hyuuga a request for a private word? Neji let his hand slip from the door handle and turned around. "Of course, Grandfather."

"Excellent." The old man slipped out from behind the table and stiffly made his way across the room to Neji. He probably should have met the Elder halfway, but Neji couldn't bring himself to move and found some measure of vengeful joy watching him struggle across the wide expanse.

"I'm not as young as I used to be," he chuckled, clearly expecting Neji to laugh along at his joke, but he found that he couldn't even force his lips to twitch. With a sigh, the Elder clapped Neji on the shoulder. "Look, Neji, I know you're not very pleased with me right now, but you had to know this was coming."

"You're right. I did."

When no other answer was forthcoming, Neji's grandfather sighed again. "I know this is difficult for you, but you know why we do it. The good of us all is more important than personal happiness."

"Yes, Grandfather, I understand. Is that all you wished to discuss with me?" Perhaps if it was, Neji could finally go and finish drowning the hopeless hopes Shikamaru had cruelly lit in his breast.

But his trials appeared to not yet be over, because his grandfather shook his head. "Actually,, what I really wanted to talk to you about was something I heard Hinata say during your.. Ah… argument. Who is this 'him' you two were referring to?"

Neji froze and his stomach lurched as if he'd just been punched in the gut. Of course the elders had been listening to every word he and Hinata had uttered during their fight, and could now use all of it against them.

Apparently the fear was written plainly on Neji's face, because the Elder chuckled good-naturedly and laid a sure hand on his shoulder. "Don't look so terrified, Neji; it was just a question! You haven't committed any crimes!"

 _That you know of,_ the snide voice in the back of Neji's mind chipped in, only adding to the fear freezing him in place like a deer faced with the headlights of an oncoming car.

"I just wanted to verify a suspicion of mine after hearing that," he continued like he had no idea of the mental struggle taking place in Neji's head. "The 'girlfriend' we spoke of earlier… well, they're not exactly a 'girlfriend', are they? They're that mysterious 'him' you were talking about. Am I wrong?"

Neji couldn't breathe. The world swam in his oxygen-deprived brain. Was this the moment he had finally been caught for the last time? Was this, after everything else he had admitted to doing over the past few months the final straw that would break their thin patience in him?

What would that mean for the betrothal?

"I would like an answer to my question, Neji," his grandfather pressed gently, though without room for argument in his tone, breaking Neji out of his deep freeze.

Swallowing with difficulty, Neji considered his options. There weren't many; all he could really do was tell the truth. The only question that remain was how best to do it.

In the end, Neji decided on the simplest way. "You are… not wrong," he said without preamble or further elaboration.

The Elder's eyebrows crept up his forehead, but he made no direct comment. "And is that where your… preferences lie?"

Again, there were any number of different answers could give that were still true, ranging from an easy "yes" to an "I don't know" - more honest, but also more confusing.

"It is… tending that way," Neji finally said, carefully watching his grandfather's eyes as he spoke, though they gave nothing away either good or bad.

"And would you say that this is the reason for your adamance against your betrothal with Hinata?"

Neji almost gasped in relief; this question was one he could easily answer, and much simpler than the one he'd been expecting.

"No. I would never use such a personal excuse for a family matter. The reasons I have given to the Council this far are the ones that form my judgement." He hesitated a second before adding quietly, "Though I would be lying if I said that it had no impact at all on my reluctance."

"I… see."

To Neji's surprise, there was neither pity nor disgust hidden in his grandfather's gaze, just a kind of confused acceptance. Neji could practically see the gears gnashing in his mind.

"I am sorry that we could not align a match with you that agreed with your preferences," he said finally. "But you understand why. The good of our clan, the assurance of the next generation, must come before personal matters."

"Thank you, Grandfather. I understand."

To say that Neji wasn't confused, and maybe a little touched, by the apology would have been a lie. The Council of Elders never liked to telegraph their mistakes and often chose to ignore them rather than apologize, so the fact that he was getting one now, and from the Lord Hyuuga himself, made him feel slightly mollified. However, the damage had already been done, and the Elder's second statement proved that the information wouldn't have changed the outcome anyway, so it was a case of too little, too late.

"I knew you would." The Elder clapped Neji on the shoulder with a smile, but he caught a flicker of something strange in his expression as the hand lingered for a second too long. Was that… relief…?

"Is that all you wished to discuss with me, Grandfather?" Neji ventured, hoping his words didn't sound too stilted.

The words jolted the Elder from someplace far away, and he blinked as he returned to the moment. "Ah- yes, that's all I wanted to ask. I do have a piece of advice for you, though."

Advice- Neji would bet his job that it would include making up with Hinata, some sexist shit about happy wife, happy clan, or something equally as insensitive. He tried not to show his distaste. "Yes?"

Leaning in close as if bequeathing a secret to him, Neji's grandfather said quietly, "Just between you and me, Neji, you're being entirely too selfless about this matter. It wouldn't hurt you to stop thinking about this in terms of what it may cost Hinata, and starting thinking in terms of what it might benefit you. You might be surprised by what you find."

A single steady blink was the only way Neji allowed his face to betray his confusion. What about this benefited him, besides the prospect of an unhappy, unchangeable life? He would lose Hinata in this; there was nothing that he could possibly gain to overcome that.

But he wasn't about to tell his grandfather that. Instead, he just inclined his head at such an angle that the Elder's hand slipped off his shoulder.

"I will keep your words in mind, Grandfather." _As much good as they'll do me_.

"Good man." He gave a single short nod. "And try to make up with your fiancée before your engagement is announced to the family next week, won't you? We want our line to set a good example for the rest of the clan."

Hadn't he called it? Going along with his theme of the rest of the conversation, however, Neji chose to bite his tongue rather than speak his mind. "Yes, Grandfather."

The Elder gave him a beaming smile. "I knew I could count on you, Neji; I always have."

Neji allowed a wry smile to decorate his lips. "Thank you for your… _kind_ words, Grandfather, but I do have some work I need to catch up on as soon as possible, so unless you have anything else you wished to speak about…"

He left the statement open-ended, hoping his grandfather would realize what he wanted without needing to be rude. He didn't want to risk appearing rebellious so close after his acquittal, but he couldn't stand to stay there in that room a second longer, where his future had been determined by callused voices and his hopes crushed by uncaring hands.

Luckily, the Elder bought Neji's excuse, because he nodded and stepped back. "I'll leave you to your work, then. I know you have quite a bit to catch up on."

This time, Neji couldn't hide the honest grimace that haunted his face. The amount of work he had piled up was almost as bad as the inbox full of emails he'd come back to after the Konoha fiasco. "Thank you, Grandfather. I wish you a productive day."

"And the same to you. Keep up the good work."

WIth that final statement, the Elder departed, leaving Neji in a state of somewhere in between fury and confusion. What had he meant, telling Neji to look at the situation from what he could stand to gain verses what Hinata would lose? Neji shook his head as he watched his grandfather amble out the back side of the courtroom, then turned and left himself. The very idea that the words presented made so sense, he reasoned as he stalked down the hallways of the Hyuuga compound, hoping his stony countenance could ward away any intrepid souls hoping to catch his eyes for a conversation. He simply had nothing to gain from this marriage, and everything to lose, same as HInata.

Still, Neji couldn't put his his grandfather's words out of his mind. What was he missing? Was there something the marriage would take from Hinata and bestow upon him? Unlikely; their standing in the clan, both being grandchildren of the current Lord Hyuuga, were almost identical, and several changes to Hyuuga law had been made in the last century so that discrimination on the basis of gender was as frowned upon in the family as it was in the country they resided in. In terms of birthright, Hinata only stood a little bit higher than him because-

Neji stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. _No, absolutely not!_ His usually snide inner voice protested, too shocked to think of a witty comeback. _There's no way they'd try something that radical!_

 _But is there any other explanation?_ The logical part of Neji's mind whispered, and he could find no argument with it.

Neji started from his greeze and quickened his pace as compared to before, almost sprinting the few remaining minutes back to his apartment. When he got to his door, he unlocked it with fumbling fingers and darted inside, letting the door slam sut behind him as he ran a course straight to his computer and booted it up.

Drumming his fingers impatiently, Neji waited for the computer to slowly go through its start-up process, then verify his identity and right to access the information contained therein before showing the soothing blue of the home screen. Moving his mouse with more vehemence than the action perhaps called for, Neji clicked on a folder he hardly ever opened because he had most of the contents memorized: The Laws and Guidelines of the Hyuuga Family, as set by the Council of Elders. Scrolling quickly through the list of documents with topics ranging everything from the education curriculum to the policies on spectral execution, Neji found the document he was looking for, labeled _Constitution Part IV: The Council_. He opened it and began to read.

 _The Council of the Elders, or The Elder's Council_

 _The governing body and judicial system of the Hyuuga Clan shall be the Council of the Elders. The Elder's Council shall be composed of three parts: the Lay Jury, the subcommittees, and the High Council. The Lay Jury shall be made up of those from less prestigious background or not qualified to work on a subcommittee or be a part of the High Council; their tasks will be to sit in on meetings and vote to ratify the decisions of the subcommittees and High Council when required. The subcommittees are any number of committees created for the carrying out of a single function; they may be permanent, as in the case of the ones who support an individual Position of the High Council, or they may be temporary, as in the case of a committee created for establishing the guilt or innocence of a man on trial. An individual is under no obligation to stay with the same committee his entire career and may switch between subcommittees with permission, or leave a the subcommittee section entirely. The High Council is constructed of six permanent Positions, and their individual descriptions will be explored below._

 _Any member of the Hyuuga Clan can apply for consideration to sit on the Council of the Elders; however, they must be at least thirty-five years of age, have served at least ten years in service to the Clan, and be of sound mental and physical function to be accepted. Great pains will be taken to ensure that every line of the Hyuuga Clan is included to provide better and more equal representation across the clan._

 _The Five Permanent Positions of the Council of Elders_

 _Owing to the nature of the subcommittees in the Council of Elders with specific tasks that will not bear change from generation to generation, five permanent position in the Council will be created. These five positions will each lead their own subcommittee and be part of the High Council, which will make decisions when either the full council is not present or is not needed. These positions are as follows: The Liaison Between the Hyuuga and Uchiha Clans, the Marriage Counselor, the Attorney for Outside Law, the Provider for Internal Peace and Wellbeing, and the High Judge of the Council, also known as Lord Hyuuga. (Note: see Amendment 6 for the details of the split of the Provider for Internal Peace and Wellbeing into two Positions, the Head of the Department of Private Safety and the Head of the Department of Internal Medicine and Health Care.)_

 _i. The Liaison Between the Hyuuga and Uchiha Clans_

 _The relationship between the Hyuuga and Uchiha clans must be kept civil to remain mutually beneficial. Therefore, the creation of a subcommittee to maintain the friendship between our sister families is necessary. The Liaison Between the Hyuuga and Uchiha Clans with take on this duty, providing stability between the two clans and the ability to call on one another in times of distress. His chief responsibility will be to keep in constant contact with his counterpart from the Uchiha clan and ensure a mutually symbiotic relationship on both sides. (Note: At the request of the Uchiha Liaison Between Clans in 1968, this position was modified to include arranging partners between the members of the Uchiha and the Hyuuga clans to provide better and more immediate assistance across clan borders.)_

 _ii. The Marriage Counselor_

 _As the Hyuuga clan is a small sovereign nation in and of itself that does not extend citizenship rights to those born Outside of the clan, special consideration must be made to ensure that the next generation of the clan will be born healthy and with pure blood. Therefore, marriages are to be arranged between the distinctive bloodlines of the family in such a way as to prevent inbreeding, as well as maximizing the compatibility of the couple. The duties of the Marriage Counselor include arranging these matches, as well as presiding over every marriage ceremony of two Hyuuga and providing counseling to anyone who wishes it in the areas of marriage and family affairs._

 _iii. The Attorney for Outside Law_

 _The Hyuuga clan exists as a separate country and entity from the United States in which it currently resides, as in any country it may make its home, and as such is not bound by their Laws and Justice. However, in cases where a member of the Hyuuga family were to get caught by Outside law enforcement and accused of a crime, it will be necessary for a member of the Clan to be well-versed in the Law of the Outside Country. The Attorney for Outside Law will therefore represent any Hyuuga in an Outside court of Law, be present and active in all cases of Outside Contract signing, and otherwise provide legal council to any Hyuuga in need of it. The Attorney for Outside Law may not refuse to give legal services to any Hyuuga on the basis of age, gender, blood status, or personal agenda, or he may be forced to retire from his post in accordance with the Impeachment Policy. (Note: this Position was expanded under Executive Order #24 by Lord Jerin Hyuuga, which incorporated giving preventative advice to avoid entanglements with the Outside legal system.)_

 _iv. The Provider for Internal Peace and Wellbeing_

 _This Position is null and void, and no longer exists in the current Elder's Council. The two aspects of the Position, Internal Peace, or the Hyuuga Clan's law enforcement, and Wellbeing, or the specialized doctoral force to deal with the unique aspects of Hyuuga (Note: and later Uchiha) physique, were too large to be combined into one Position and placed too much power behind the Provider. Therefore, the Position was split in twain to provide better balance of power._

 _iv. a. The Head of the Department of Private Safety_

 _The purpose of the Department of Private Safety is to provide the best assurance of safety to each and every member of the greater Hyuuga clan. Each individual in the Hyuga Sub-Nation is entitled to the pursuit of happiness without fear of their lives or property, and the Department of Private Safety ensures that those rights are never alienated._

 _iv. b. The Head of the Department of Internal Medicine and Health Care_

 _As the physical conditions of Hyuuga and Uchiha clan members, in particular their eyes, are unique from the lay population, it is imperative that they neither come into contact with nor are exposed by Outside medicinal practices or personnel. Therefore, the creation of a Department for Internal Medicine and Health Care is necessary to protect the secrets of the Hyuuga and Uchiha Clan eyes and to prevent their powers from being abused by Outside sources._

 _v. The High Judge of the Council, or, The Lord Hyuuga_

 _The High Judge of the Elders' Council is the Supreme Justice of the Hyuuga courtroom. It is for this reason that he (or she) is to be bestowed the Title of Lord Hyuuga. The High Judge has the ability to propose new Laws and Amendments of the Hyuuga Constitution. However, the High Judge is not a monarch, and each proposition must be seconded by another member of the Hereditary High Council and ratified by a two-thirds majority vote of the entire Council. The High Judge also has the ability to issue Executive Orders, which do not have to be ratified by a two-thirds majority vote and may create a lasting effect on the culture of the Hyuuga Clan and the Council of Elders, but may be overturned by a later Law, Amendment, or two-thirds majority vote. In times of political distress or when a consensus must be reached before the whole Council can be called to court, The High Judge may act as a representative and issue orders without the consent or permission from from the Council, though any permanent changes must be ratified by the propper two-thirds majority vote after the time of crisis has passed._

 _The Passing of the Permanent Positions from Generation to Generation_

 _The five permanent positions of the Council as mentioned above, being the Liaison Between the Hyuuga and Uchiha Clans, the Marriage Counselor, the Attorney for Outside Law, the Provider for Internal Peace and Wellbeing, and the High Judge of the Council, also known as Lord Hyuuga, are also hereditary positions. (Note: Amendment 6 splits the Provider for Internal Peace and Wellbeing into two Positions, the Head of the Department of Private Safety and the Head of the Department of Internal Medicine and Health Care.)_

 _To generate the smoothest transition between the generations, the five (six) positions will pass from father to eldest son (Note: see Amendment 4 for the details on changing this from "son" to "child" to allow female members of the Council to hold hereditary positions.) The heir to the Position must be identified by the time he (or she) turns twenty-five, and must abide by all other criteria for Council membership at the time of his (or her) induction, namely the age and minimum years of service to the Clan stipulations. Exceptions due to unforeseen circumstances may be granted on an individual basis, but must be ratified by a two-thirds majority vote of the entire Council. Two heirs for every Position must be identified at all times if possible, to ensure a Position is never left empty in times of emergency._

 _Subsection A: Transfering the Title of Heir to a Position_

 _This subsection details the instructions for transfering the title of Heir to a Hereditary Position in the event that the logical heir to a Position is unfit to hold office by factors including but not limited to the following: disability, personal injury, mixed blood, lost standing or disgrace, abdication, gender (Note: this stipulation removed by Amendment 4), death or general inability to perform the actions required for the Position. In such a case, a new heir must be chosen to take the place of the former Heir, and the former Heir must relinquish all claim to the title of Heir to a Position to avoid future conflict._

 _Only the current holder of a Position Title can propose that an Heir is unfit for office, and nominate a new Heir to take his (or her) place, though both choices must be ratified by a two-thirds majority vote of the entire Council. Owing to the direct hereditary nature of the Positions, the new Heir must be either a spouse, sibling, or child of the original Heir to preserve the bloodline and prevent any future conflict between competing bloodlines to occur._

 _Subsection B: Training the Heir_

 _Rigorous training for any Heir to a hereditary Position must be given…_

Neji's heart thudded painfully in his breast. He hadn't wanted to believe it, _couldn't_ believe it, and here was the proof to justify his worst suspicions. The real reason his grandfather was pushing the marriage between himself and Hinata was because he wanted Neji to usurp Hinata's birthright and become his second Heir, after Hinata's father. The second Heir to the position of High Judge of the Elder Council.

He could be Lord Neji Hyuuga.

Neji felt guilty shame blocking his throat as soon as the thought had passed through his mind, but only because his initial reaction was one of vicious joy. To hold such a position of power, especially over those who had held so much over him for so long-! The very prospect was heady. Because _Ab Ordine Libertas._ From order comes Freedom- finally, Neji's freedom.

But at what cost? The guilt clawed harder at Neji's throat, making it difficult to breathe. That position was rightfully Hinata's - could Neji allow himself to steal it from her, especially when he had been the only one to support her and believe in her for all these years?

Neji was afraid of what it meant about himself if the answer to that question turned out to be yes.

His eyes drifted back to the screen. As much as he felt like he should look away, the words drew him back in. He suddenly wished that he had someone to talk this over with, someone much smarter than him and unbiased as to the politics of his family-

But the only person who currently fit that description Neji had informed he no longer had any place in his life.

Gradually, lust for knowledge - if he wasn't willing to admit to a lust for power just yet - overcame his guilt, and Neji started reading again. He should probably know more about this, anyway. Even just for curiosity's sake.

 _Subsection B: Training the Heir_

 _Rigorous training for any Heir to a hereditary Position must be given to ensure maximum preparedness before assuming duties. However, the training for each individual Position's Heri is to be specifically tailored to that Position, so little can be said of it here. The current holder of the Position must personally oversee the training to judge whether the Heir is fit to take over his (or her) position based on his (or her) performance in their training. If their performance is not satisfactory, they may be stripped of their Title of Heir and a new Heir may be selected according to the process detailed in Subsection A…_

* * *

"Sir, we've just received an automatic notification about Neji's computer usage."

The Elder looked up from the report he was reading behind his desk at the man standing at his door. Plucking the glasses he only used for see up close from his nose and folding them onto his desk, he steepled his hands and gave the young man his full attention. "Very well. State your report."

"He's reading our Constitution, Sir. Specifically, the section on the Council, and more specifically, the subsection concerning the hereditary positions."

A smug smile parted the Elder's lips. "So he's finally figured it out. Perfect."

"I'm sorry, sir, but I don't understand," the man who had brought the information said with a frown. He was one of the newest elders, just recently indicted to the council, and worked under the Law Enforcement department. "But how is this a good thing? Don't we usually monitor these kinds of activities as potential flags for rebellion?"

"Neji's case is special," the Elder said dismissively. "It's good if he's curious."

He could tell the man wasn't satisfied with his answer, but he knew better than to question the judgement of his superior. "Yes, Sir. Is there any other information you require from this report?"

"No, that will be all. You are dismissed."

"Thank you, Sir."

The Elder turned his eyes back to the report he was supposed to be reading, perching his glasses back on his nose as the younger elder left his office, but none of the words registered in his brain. His plan had worked. Now that Neji knew what was in store for him, there was no way he'd try to rebel again. A smile split his face that had nothing to do with the paper in his hands.

He had, in effect, won this war.


	39. Forming a Plan

"Namaki! Namaki, I know you're there!"

The words echoed through the clear early afternoon air around the Space Needle, for once sunny with no chance of rain. Shikamaru stood up on the very tip of the point with his arms crossed over his chest and a petulant expression on his face. He knew he looked like a child in the middle of a tantrum, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He had just lost a major game, right after he thought he'd clinched his win forever. That was something that had to be rectified immediately, but to do that, he needed information.

"Namaki!" He shouted again, glaring at the few fluffy clouds overhead. "So help me God, if you keep ignoring me, I'll draw so much attention to myself that the live members of your family will march right over here faster than you can say-!"  
"All right, all right, I get it," a voice spoke irritatedly behind him. "I thought I'd gotten rid of you for good. You said you wouldn't be coming back any longer."

"The situation has changed." Shikamaru knew that Namaki's ghost was waiting for him to turn his head to see her, but he wasn't about to give her any more sway over him, not when he'd already put himself in the disadvantaged position by coming to her for help.

Apparently she understood what he was trying to do, because she sighed and floated into Shikamaru's direct line of vision. "What do you want from me this time, shadow-brat?"

"Information. I want to make a deal."

"Ha!" She gave a disparaging laugh. "As if you could possibly have anything that I would want."

"How about a life?"

"A _life_?" The words were obviously meant to come out scathing, but Shikamaru could sense an undercurrent of interest in them. "I'm long since dead; what use could a life possibly have for me? God know you don't have the power to give me back the life I had before."

"No, I don't have that kind of power." Shikamaru stepped closer to her, fixing her with a focused gaze. "But together, we can stop what happened to you from happening to another member of your family. You can save the life of your progenity."

The Hyuuga ghost's head jerked up as if the words had burned her, a furious glare scalding him. "I thought I warned you to be careful! I told you not to get caught! You foolish boy, what have you done?!"

"Nothing! We didn't get caught," Shikamaru quickly assured her. "No one has seen me-" _except that little brat of a cousin of his, and she's not going to tell anyone of her precious big brother_ \- "and no one will. He's not in any danger right now."

"Then why come to me to barter for his life?"

"Because I've deduced that he's going to be, and I want to help him." Finally leaving his high ground, Shikamaru slowly circled Namaki, forcing her to turn her head to follow him. "Unless I'm mistaken, it was not your actions that earned you your sentence, but your opinions, your ideas. Even without knowing your situation or much of your family's laws, I can tell that he's headed down the same path."

"And why should I care?" The Hyuuga ghost spat, turning away from Shikamaru with her arms crossed over her chest.

Shikamaru snuck up behind her and laid a hand of her shoulder, causing her to jump. "You can't tell me you feel nothing for his plight," he whispered into her ear. "A young man still in the prime of his youth, making the same mistakes you made, only decades later. Don't you want to prevent this from happening? Don't you want your life to have stood for something, instead of your death slipping unknown into the ether of the past, the lessons of your tale lost forever?"

He knew he had got her when she asked quietly, "What kind of mistakes?"

Shikamaru's fingers bit into the spectral flesh of her shoulders on instinct, though he quickly forced his grip to loosen. "Disobedience, both civil and not. He's fighting a decision handed to him by the Elders, and at the same time he's keeping secrets from them."

"Secrets like you?"

The words were meant to wound, but Shikamaru just brushed them off with a chuckle despite the sting they left behind. "Yes, like me, though I can't claim to solely hold that honor. He's keeping someone else's secret for them, though knowing this particular secret and not telling is just as bad - if not worse - than if it was his own secret."

"What decision is he fighting? If you even know," she added as a venomous afterthought as if it would mask the curiosity in her earlier tone.  
"Of course I know." Shikamaru allowed a note of offense to creep into his voice as he abandoned his post behind the Hyuuga ghost to retreat back up to the tip of the Space Needle. Her eyes Followed him as he went. "He's fighting an arranged marriage."

"An arranged marriage?! Ha!"

The sudden laugh, followed by the abrupt change of the Hyuuga ghost's disposition from curiously affronted to smug, made Shikamaru frown. What had he miscalculated? "What's so funny?"

"I thought this was going to be something important, with the way you were carrying on! But an arranged marriage?" She laughed again, throwing her head back to the sky to show her disregard for the ghost before her. "Everyone in the entire Hyuuga clan is subjected to those! He's not going to be silenced for resisting- so long as he aquessess in the end, and they all do. You want to know why I was silenced? I proposed an Amendment to our Constitution that would make illegal certain ghost-hunting practices enjoyed for sport that I saw as barbaric. Compared to that, an arranged marriage? Forget it, shadow-brat. Get out of my sight. You're not worth my time."

She started to drift downwards in disinterest, but a quiet word from Shikamaru drew her to a pause for a moment.

"He's fighting the decision because he's in love with a man."

Slowly, the Hyuuga ghost turned back, fixing a suddenly more interested expression as he swallowed and continued.

"He's in love with a man… a man who's been dead for fifty years."

Now she turned back fully. "And am I to assume that this 'man' is you?"

Shikamaru inclined his head, but gave no other response. He hadn't wanted to come this close to begging, and the next time he opened his mouth, he was afraid that that was what would come out. He hated to beg, but for Neji's sake, he felt like his body would supersede his mind and do it before he could stop himself.

"And he's told you this? Point-blank, to your face, that he in no uncertain terms loves you?"

"He doesn't need to."

The answer gave little away, and Shikamaru saw frustration starting to build in the Hyuuga ghost's face. Seeking to turn that frustration into a more productive outlet, Shikamaru reached for her with a blank expression.

"Please help me, Namaki. This is a young man who wants to push past the destiny written for him to one he writes for himself. He doesn't deserve to go through what you and I have suffered. How can I help him fight?"

A conflicted expression appeared briefly on the Hyuuga ghost's face before morphing into one of determination. "No. I'm sorry, shadow-brat, but my answer is no, and will be no matter how many time you ask."

Shikamaru felt like an icy hand had punched straight through his gut, grabbed ahold of his organs, and then ripped them back out again in a messy mix of blood and intestinal matter. He was cold, though no clouds had ridden across the sky to block out the sky. "But… why?"

Again, a conflicted expression appeared on her face, but lasted longer this time before she sighed in defeat instead of stubborn determination. "All right. Come here."

She suddenly dipped in height and shot around the spire of the Space Needle, forcing Shikamaru to turn his head to keep track of her movements. His upper lip twitched as he realized that she had just used the move he had pulled on her at the start of the conversation. Gritting his teeth in irritation, Shikamaru followed her down from the top of the tower and found her sitting cross legged on the handrail, and with a scowl, he joined her.

"Why won't you tell me anything at all?"

"It appears that you are under some misconceptions about our family," the Hyuuga ghost said with a cutting stare, steeping her hands like a teacher about to impart a lesson to an unruly student. "I assume you only came to me for help because your Hyuuga friend - or lover, as the case may be - already refused to give you the information that you desire. Am I correct?"

Shikamaru didn't say anything, but he knew she guessed what what his answer would be by the way he averted his eyes from her knowing gaze.

"I see. In that case, this is not about you finding the magic words to persuade me to tell you what you want to know, where you failed before; and don't think I don't know that was what you were trying to do. This is about the oath we, you Hyuuga friend and I, both swore to never reveal our family's secrets, and nothing you can say or do can change my mind to the contrary."

Shikamaru swallowed heavily. "Not even if I told you that he was running himself down a path that will most likely end with his death?"

"I'm sorry, but not even then. Every one of us has - or had - the obligation to protect our own life. We weren't the type to rely on the benevolence of others." Her gaze fluttered down to rest on her hand in her lap. "Anyone who bears the name of Hyuuga is under the strict and absolute power of the Hyuuga family. _Ab Ordine Libertas_ … from order comes freedom. Our covenant is the price we pay for being born with the powers we wield."

Shikamaru bowed his head. He couldn't say that he hadn't, somewhere in the back of his mind, expected this kind of outcome. After all, if he couldn't persuade Neji to let him help, how could he hope to convince this ghost who he barely know to offer information she'd already refused him once? If he was being completely honest with himself, he'd only come to the Space Needle hoping that the Hyuuga ghost would give something useful away by mistake during her attempts to explain why she couldn't tell him what he wanted to hear-

Oh.

He figured it out.

Standing abruptly, Shikamaru inclined his head to his still-sitting companion. "Thank you, Namaki. I believe I have everything I need. I should take my leave now, and this time hopefully I won't have to return."

The words threw her off balance as she looked up at him in confusion. "I'm sorry- what? What did I…? Did you…?"

"Nothing you need to worry about," he said, including his head to her in a gesture of politeness. "Goodbye, Namaki."

With that, Shikamaru turned on his heel and descended from the tower, a plan already starting to form in his mind.

* * *

When Hinata finally made it out of the building, she wanted to scream aloud at the sky. It wasn't fair! Here she'd finally been happy with her lot in life, and Neji had to go and ruin it! It was all his fault! She _hated_ him!

Hinata ran down the street without caring where she was going, tears blurring her vision until she no longer could ever read the street signs. Occasionally, someone would bump into her on her headlong dash, and they always shouted angrily she passed them, but she never stopped until her lungs burned and her legs couldn't carry her another step forward without collapsing. Her watery eyes identified a bus station in front of her with difficulty, and she turned her feet towards it, collapsing on the bench with a hiccup.

There was someone already sitting on the other end of the bench, and they looked over with alarm when Hinata tried to wipe her eyes dry and only succeeded in sobbing harder.

"Miss? Miss, are you alright?"

Hinata turned at the sound of the voice, but she wasn't able to make out a face through her tears. What kind of stupid question was that? Obviously she was not _alright_ , as the person had asked. She was balling her eyes out in public! What other answer could she possibly give?

But her private heartache was none of this person's personal business, despite the fact that Hinata had chosen to have her meltdown in public, so she dried her eyes as best she could and gave the person - who she now saw was a middle aged woman holding a bag full of groceries - a weak smile.

"I'll b-be fine. I just l-lost som-mething imp-portant to me, is all-l."

It was only after she said it that Hinata realized how true the statement was. She had lost something important to her: she had lost the idealized version of her big brother, and now she was so scared she didn't know what to do.

"Oh, I'm sorry about that, dear." The woman's expression softened, and she extended a hand to pat Hinata on the shoulder. She flinched away at the first touch, and the woman patted a few more times before pulling away. "We all get times like that every so often, and everybody could use a good cry once in awhile. But if you keep your chin up, you'll feel better eventually."

Hinata could scarcely summon up the energy not to glare at the woman. How could she know anything of what Hinata was feeling right now?

As if sensing the direction of Hinata's thoughts, the woman looked down at her hands folded in her lap with a slightly sad expression. "I myself lost a son a few years ago. Some days, I felt like I couldn't stand to live anymore. But the sun kept rising in the sky every morning, and eventually life moved on, and I moved on with it."

Oh. Hinata looked down in her lap as well, pink touching her cheeks as her anger faded away into shame for thinking mean things about the woman. "I- I'm s-sorry. Do you still m-miss him?"

"Every day, dear. Every day."

A bus pulled into the stop and the woman stood up. "This is me, dear. Are you getting on?"

Hinata looked at the bus. She didn't even recognize the line. "Ah, n-no. I j-just… I'll w-walk. Th-thank you f-for talking to m-me, though."

"You're very welcome, dear. Goodbye."

After the woman had gotten on the bus, the doors closed behind her and the behemoth vehicle belched exhaust and pulled away from the curb. Significantly calmed now after talking to the woman, Hinata stood up and looked around her, trying to figure out where she might have run to in her tear-blinded haze.

Nothing looked familiar. A new kind of panic started to bloom in Hinata's chest; what if she was lost? She couldn't call Neji to come get her, not with the way she'd just acted to him- not that she wanted to rely on him anymore anyway. Calling her father would be equally, if not more, shameful. What options did she have left, then? Other than getting herself out of this mess, not much.

Even though she was starting to feel like she wanted to vomit, Hinata squared her shoulders and started marching down the sidewalk in the direction she thought she'd come from. If she kept walking the way she'd came, eventually she would come across something that she recognized and be able to work her way from there. A tiny surge of pride went through her chest; just a few weeks ago, she would have been frozen here, unable to make any decisions, but now she was up and walking.

 _See!_ she wanted to yell at Neji. _You don't have to lie to me anymore! I can take care of myself! I am stronger than you think I am!_

Hinata had gone maybe a minute, maybe two, when she suddenly felt the presence of a familiar ghost brush up against the edges of her perception. She froze mid-step, and the person walking along behind her almost bumped into her, than walked around her still frozen form with an irritated curse aimed at her, but she couldn't hear it. Her body started to shake.

 _Of all the ghosts to run into here, of course it would be him_.

Suddenly, though, after Hinata had finally convinced her body to move again, she realized something. The ghost wasn't moving, wasn't following her. That meant that it probably didn't even know she was there, and that she had the advantage.

A few weeks ago, Hinata would have run without a second thought, sprinting away as fast as she could until she was safe, and then alerting someone better equipped to deal with the danger. But now, she took a deep breath and turned in the direction of the ghost, following the thin traces of its aura that she could feel. As soon as her quest took her outside of the busy main thoroughfare and into a mostly abandoned side street, she reached down and pulled the switchblade from her sock that all Hyuuga children were required to carry until the were old enough to be given real weapons. With shaking hands, she opened up the switchblade to reveal a silver blade.

She was close enough that she could tell the ghost's exact location now, right on the other side of a wall in front of her. Her hands shaking so hard that she almost dropped the switchblade, Hinata fished her cell phone out of her pocket and placed a call to the distress hotline for Seattle.

It picked up on the first ring. "What is the nature of your emergency?"

"Th-there's a wr-wraith," Hinata said into the phone, the tightness of her throat constricting her words down to the level of a whisper.

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that?"

"I f-found a wraith!" Hinata tried again, and this time the words came out much louder. "I n-need someone to h-help m-me bring him in-n!"

"You found a ghost, you said? We don't usually bring them in unless they pose an immediate threat, so you'll just have to tag their location and a professional will investigate at another time-"

"No, not just a ghost! A _wr-wraith_!"

There was a pause on the other end of the line before Hinata heard a sigh. "Missy, are you absolutely sure you found a wraith? They don't usually populate Seattle. Why don't you just tag its location and I can send someone out later to look at it, okay?"

"It will be too late by then! I'm telling you, I know it's a wraith!"

After another lengthy pause, the voice sighed and grumbled, "I guess I'll send out an emergency response team to your location, then. Do you know where you are?"

"Uh…" Hinata gulped; she didn't.

"I'll trace the call then. Someone should be there in ten minutes."

"Th-thank you-"

The line went dead before Hinata could finish her thanks. Gripping the switchblade tighter in her hand, Hinata took a step toward a space in the wall that the ghost was on the other side of. Now she only had to make sure it stayed there until the backup arrived.

* * *

"Ha- halt! Don't m-move, w-wr-wraith-th-th!"

Huh. Shikamaru hadn't thought that he'd been deep enough in thought to allow someone to sneak up on him, but then again, with Neji currently ignoring him, he hadn't anticipated anyone wanting to find him. Least of all the tiny, stuttering little cousin that Neji devoted all of his time and energy to and who had no idea how lucky she had it, the little shit.

And no, Shikamaru was not jealous of a sixteen year old child. Not in the least. He was better than that.

 _Just keep telling yourself that_.

Shikamaru slowly turned around to stare at the girl, his posture deliberately relaxed and his hands shoved in his pockets. She was shaking, the tip of the silver knife in her grasp moving erratically through the air in a space several square inches large. It was clear that she was meant to be menacing him with it, but she looked more afraid of it herself than he was. Shikamaru could almost feel sorry for her.

Almost.

"P-p-put your h-hands-s where I c-can s-see them-m! In-n the n-name of the H-Hy-Hyuuga f-family, I am t-taking you in so that-t we may help-p-p you f-find p-peace and-d escape this w-world!"

The words sounded robotic, well-practiced yet unsure at the same time, and they inspired little fear in the ghost. "And why should I?" He countered lazily, keeping his hands securely in his pockets.

Suddenly, Shikamaru found himself being confronted by the business end of the silver knife, no longer shaking, a little closer than he was comfortable with. He went briefly cross-eyes trying to focus on the point before he shifted his gaze up to her eyes, and the steel he found there both surprised and slightly humbled him.

 _She's more like her cousin that I knew_.

"Because you took my big brother away from me," she said very clearly, the words unhesitant. "And I'm not going to let you get away with it."

For a brief moment, Shikamaru considered his options. Realistically, the little girl was no match for him. And he'd already started working on his plan… but he was flexible; he could make this work. Actually, it might work even better than before.

"Consider me captured, then!" He said with a cheeky smile, stretching out his wrists for her. "Would you happen to have any handcuffs of you? Silver ones, of course."


	40. Summertime

Neji wouldn't say that when he woke the next morning, his sheets felt uncomfortably cold or that his bed was larger that he was used to it being, but he still felt the absence of Shikamaru's presence before he even opened his eyes. Perhaps the room was lighter than usual, the absence of shadows pressing against his closed lids with a delicate glow.

Or maybe it was the soreness in his ass that still refused to leave despite the fact that this was the second morning now.

Groaning, Neji threw off his covers and shuffled to the bathroom, where he stared blearily at his reflection as he popped two Aspirin into his mouth and downed them swiftly. He looked like a mess; there were dark circles under his eyes, and his already pale skin had an extra layer of pastiness added to it. Even though he hadn't gone to sleep exorbitantly late the night before, he still felt like a oncoming train had hit him, driven over the top of him, stopped, backed up over him, and then ran him over one more time for good measure.

 _Well_ , Neji thought to himself, shaking his head vigorously in an effort to restore some vivacity to his eyes, _none of those reports are going to file themselves._

With one final sigh, he exited the bathroom, dressed, and sat down in front of his computer to get a few reports done and filed before breakfast. As he clicked open the first one, he had a sudden and rather alarming thought:

 _When did I start to hate my job?_

* * *

Still flying on the high of the praise given to her the day before by the elders, particularly her grandfather, after the successful capture of Shikamaru - or "the shadow wraith", as they called him since he had refused to give up his real name, and Hinata hadn't been about to tell them - Hinata practically danced down the sidewalk to Konohamaru's house. She had done it; she had proven that she wasn't so weak that she couldn't do anything! She had held a wraith at knifepoint for fifteen minutes while backup was traveling to her location, and then assisted in capturing and transporting it, since the hotline she'd called hadn't really believed her when she said she'd found a wraith and hadn't sent enough people or supplies to the location. Nothing would take away her elation today!

Not even the niggling suspicion in the back of her brain that said Shikamaru had let himself get captured too easily and must have some reason for it.

But today had no need for thoughts like those; today was glorious and Hinata didn't want any kind of negativity to spoil it! The sun was finally filtering down in weak strips through the cloud cover overhead, and the puddles on the sidewalk were felt a warm as Hinata splashed her puddle boots through them. Today was beautiful, and Hinata was going to share it with someone that made her just as happy as the sunshine did.

She skipped the last block to Konohamaru's house with a stupid grin on her face, jumping up on every step to his front door before wiggling in anticipation after knocking. Just a few seconds later, as if Konohamaru had been waiting close behind the door for Hinata's arrival, which he probably had been, she was greeted with an opening door and a wide grin.

"Hinata! Glad you could make it! You look like you're in fantastic mood today!"

"I am!" Hinata chirped, and grinned proudly at the look of surprise on Konohamaru's face when he realized that she hadn't stuttered when she said it.

"Konohamaru?" The voice of Konohamaru's mother floated out from the kitchen down the hallway. "Is that your friend? Don't make her stand outside; let her in!"

Cheeks pinkening from the rebuke, Konohamaru opened the door wider. "Sorry, Hinata. Come on it. Uden and Moegi are already setting up in my room."

She stepped inside and Konohamaru shut the door after her, then together they traversed the hallway down to his bedroom. As they passed the opening into the kitchen, Hinata gave a polite wave to Konohamaru's mother, who smiled in return.

"Good to see you back, Hinata. You keep the wild boys in order for me, won't you now?"

From the bedroom up the hallway, Moegi's voice drifted out faintly but sure. "I'M NOT A BOY!"

"No, but you might as well be with as rowdy as you get with us!" Konohamaru shouted back.

Flushing, Hinata nodded mutely and allowed herself to be led the rest of the way to Konohamaru's room while a call of "Have fun!" drifted out of the kitchen after them. Like Konohamaru had said earlier, Udon and Moegi were already there, each pulling out their respective instruments and hooking them together.

"Mey, Mimama," Moegi mumbled around the reed clamped between her teeth, to which Hinata gave her a bemused expression.

"Um…?"

"That's whatever passes for a greeting in Moegi-speak when she's got her mouth full," Udon explained, then took the mouthpiece of his trombone and blew air through it to create a noise that resembled a fart.

Moegi took the reed out of her mouth and gestured with it wildly to the trombonist before sliding it into place on the head of her tenor saxophone. "I resent that accusation!"

"If you resent it, learn not to speak with your reed in your mouth."

"Guys, cut it out!" Konohamaru picked up his trumped from the stand it was resting on and pointed it in turn to each of his companions. "Are you ready? Tuned?" At their sheepish expressions, he shook his head, then threw a tuner at Moegi's head, which she was barely able to get her hands up in time to catch. "Thought so. Get ready; we start in five."

At his words, Hinata suddenly felt the giddy happiness that had been bubbling within her all day dampen somewhat. She was about to sing with backup accompaniment for the first time in her life- even if it was only three instruments instead of a full band. What if she couldn't do it? What if she messed up and made a fool of herself? What if they looked down on her and wouldn't want to be around her ever again because she was a pathetic untalented wretch who couldn't even sing the easiest song and-

"Here's your music, Hinata."

Hinata was pulled from her cycle of vicious thoughts by Konohamaru's voice, and she looked up to see that he was holding out a few sheets of paper to her. She took them with trembling hands, unfolding them to see that they were laid out like the pages of a book. Lines of familiar text were printed underneath less familiar actual lines that crossed the page, each line graced with little dots in different shapes and sizes that supposedly told her how to sing. Hinata had taken a few years of piano lessons when she was younger, as did all Hyuuga children because the old-fashioned philosophies of the family dictated that education in all aspects was imperative for the kind of individual a Hyuuga must be, but she'd been allowed to quit because of her stage fright and not very much in the way of reading music had stuck with her.

Nervously, Hinata looked up from the page. "I c-can't read this."

"You won't have to," Konohamaru assured her. "I'll cue you when to come in, and the three of us will follow you from there. It's just like the recording you sang along to. You'll be fine."

Hinata looked back at the paper. She had listened to this song on repeat for almost every waking moment since the last time she and Konohamaru had met, so she had even the background parts memorized by now. Konohamaru was right; it would be fine. All she needed to do was believe in herself and just sing.

With a quick nod, Hinata looked up again to voice her agreement. Konohamaru had turned away however, and was fitting something small into the bell of his trumpet. Frowning, Hinata pointed to it.

"What's that?"

Konohamaru looked up at the question, then he smiled when he saw where Hinata was pointing. "This? It's a mute. My mom makes me use it whenever I play in the house 'cause trumpets are so loud. It makes me play quieter. See?"

He raised his trumpet to his lips, and unlike the one performance Hinata had ever seen him play at, which nearly blown her ears out from the pressure of the sound, only a thin noise emanated from the bell of the instrument. The sound was just as lovely as the one she had heard before, however, just quieter. Lowering his trumpet, Konohamaru gestured over to the corner where Udon was fitting his mouthpiece into his trombone.

"Udon's got one too. See?"

Udon briefly raised the metallic object into the air to give Hinata a glimpse of it before sticking it into the bell of his instrument as well and giving a few experimental blows. Unlike with Konohamaru's mute, however, the sound was changed, leading the one robust voice of the instrument into a shrill whistle with a tinny aftertone.

"Why d-does it sound different?" She asked.

"It's a special jazz mute." Udon smirked at Konohamaru smugly. "Konohamaru's still saving up for one."

Grimacing, Konohamaru rubbed the back of his head with the bell of his instrument. "Why don't you rub it in a little harder, Udon?"

"Okay. Konohamaru's too poor to get all the fun toys he wants to play with his trumpet, so he's stuck with a boring straight mute while I get to play with all my beautiful trombone mutes over here-"

A loud honk interrupted Udon's monologue as Moegi raised the bell of her instrument to his ear and blew a blast of air through it. "That's enough, you too! Time to rehearse." She rolled her eyes in Hinata's direction. "Brass players and their mutes. They can be so ridiculous sometimes."

Despite the obvious contempt with which she spoke the word, Hinata had to ask. "Why don't you use a mute?"

Giving her a cheeky wink, Moegi replied, "Because, my dear, unlike them, I actually know how to play quietly."

"That's so unfair-!

"The structure of the bell is specifically designed to produce maximum sound-!"

"I have to wear earplugs when I practice high notes! _Ear plugs_ , Moegi!"

"You're just jealous that you don't have cool toys to play with like us."

"Yeah, yeah." Moegi rolled her eyes but otherwise ignored their tirade. "We ready to start yet?"

After a few more grumbles from the brass section, everyone settled in and tuned quickly before Konohamaru turned back to Hinata.

"We played this song in our band a few years ago, back when we had a vocalist, so don't worry about us, Hinata. This is all for you, so you can sing however you want. However fast, slow, loud, soft, you do what you want and we'll follow you. Okay?"

Hinata suppressed a shiver. She would much rather have had them give her explicit directions on how to sing the song than letting her take the lead and stumble into the unknown all by herself. But still, it was a comfort to know that all three of them had her back. "O-okay."

"Awesome! Alright gang, about one… two… three…" Konohamaru snapped his fingers together, and on four the three of them started playing.

The sound was rather bare with only the trombone and the tenor saxophone providing the base chords and the trumpet filling in a tinny melody, but Hinata still recognized the song as the one she'd been listening to non-stop for the past few days. After a brief introduction, the trumpet soared over the lower instruments in a lilting melody that Hinata recognized as the tune that she would sing. The sound was diminished by the mute, but it was still beautiful and her breath caught at the sound of it.

Eventually the introduction wound down to a close, and the trio held a chord as Konohamaru gave a slight movement in Hinata's direction with the bell of his instrument. She stared at him, nonplussed, until she remembered that the whole point of this was that she was supposed to be singing and she jumped at the knowledge that it was time and dropped her sheet music. Scrabbling on the floor to pick up the paper again, she was out of breath by the time she stood back up and gave Konohamaru a terrified look.

He wasn't deterred by her panic and took a break from the note he was holding to say, "Here's your starting note. Whenever you're ready."

Then he leaned toward her and played another note, and Hinata humed to match it and nodded. When she was ready, she took a deep breath and started to sing.

" _S-summertime… and the l-livin' is easy… Fish are jumpin'... and the cotton is high…_ "

The first few words came out way too quiet and she stumbled over a few of the consonants, but as Hinata went on her voice grew more confident. She discovered that she didn't know the song as well as she'd thought she knew it, considering the amount of times what she sang didn't sound right with what the others were playing, but by the time it ended she the panic had mostly subsided and she was having fun. Her words ended, but the trio kept playing for a few more seconds before they played one final chord and lowered their instruments.

Instantly all the insecurities Hinata had felt about her singing before she started began to pour back. What if they didn't like it? Of course they wouldn't like it; they were all practically professionals, and she was just some dumb girl with confidence issues and stage fright. This was a bad idea. She should never have agreed to it or proposed it in the first place because it had been her idea initially but whatever Hinata didn't care at this point because now they were just going to all laugh at her for being stupid and dumb and bad at music and bad at singing and bad at everything and-

"You said this is her first time singing along with anything other than a recording, right Konohamaru?" Moegi asked slowly, a thoughtful look on her face.

"Yep."

"Damn." Udon whistled appreciatively. "You're really good for a newbie, Hinata."

Hinata blinked, the words tearing her out of her self-deprecating inner monologue. "W-wait, r-really?"

"Yeah, you were great!" Konohamaru gave her his trademark lopsided grin. "No matter what happened, you just kept going! That's the mark of a true professional."

"B-but… it sounded b-bad! I f-felt like I was singing wrong all the t-time!" Hinata protested, wringing her hands and accidentally crumpling the sheet music she was holding in the process.

"I mean, that was our first time. It's not going to be perfect." Moegi winked at her. "But for the record, most of that was Udon's fault."

Udon raised a hand and sighed. "Guilty as charged. I forgot about the key change in the middle and started playing all the wrong accidentals. That threw all the chords into either a minor key or augmented them to include tritones, which made the ensemble sound dissonant because you were singing in a major key. Sorry about that, Hinata. I'll get it right next time."

Hinata blinked. She'd understood absolutely nothing of what Udon had said except for "next time". "You m-mean… you want to do it again?"

"Of course." He shrugged. "That's what practice is for, after all: fixing your mistakes and making anything you can better. You up for another round?"

Another round? Hinata's hands started to shake, then she took another deep breath. If she did it once, she could do it again. "Sure."

* * *

"Great work today, everybody!" Konohamaru grinned as he clipped his trumpet case back together. "Especially you, Hinata. You're sounding awesome!"

Hinata blushed, but managed not to stutter too much when she responded. "Th-thank you. You were amazing too."

For a second, Konohamaru looked floored by the compliment, then his grin widened and he grabbed Hinata's shoulders in a one-armed hug, drawing a squeak from her as he pulled her in to nestle against his side. "Amazing-! Guys isn't she so sweet?"

"She is," Udon murmured dryly, at the same time as Moegi yelled through the door to the hallway, "Oh, get a room, you two!"

Hinata pinkened further, but didn't push herself away from Konohamaru's side. It was surprisingly comfortable there, leaning against his warm body. Konohamaru gave her shoulder one more pat before he released her with a sigh.

"Come on, Moegi, don't say things like that. You know it makes Hinata uncomfortable."

With a shaky smile, Hinata offered, "Actually, I… I've gotten used to it b-by now. I don't mind so much if you t-tease me. It's like I'm, um… it's like I'm part of your group now."

"Of course you are!" Moegi popped her head back into the room for the express purpose of sending Hinata a reassuring grin. "There's no way we're letting you out of our clutches now!"

The words would have made Hinata squirm in discomfort weeks, or even just days, ago, but she just smiled to Moegi in return. "You'd have a harder t-time getting rid of me than convincing me to s-stay."

"That's what we like to hear!" Konohamaru bumped her hip with the side of his trumpet case, then turned to the others. "Okay, sorry to break the party up, but you guys really have to go now. Moegi, doesn't your shift start in fifteen minutes?"

"Oh, shit! You're right!" Moegi raced out of the room, and Udon rolled his eyes and followed her.

"This is why I should get my own means of transportation. Now I'm going to have to walk home from her work because she won't have enough time to drop me off."

"I will if we take the shortcut!" Moegi's voice echoed from the hallway.

Udon visibly paled. "We are never taking that shortcut again!"

"Suit yourself!"

Shaking his head and muttering under his breath, Udon exited the room, leaving Hinata and Konohamaru behind alone. Humming to himself, Konohamaru stored his trumpet case in the back of his closet and then turned to Hinata.

"Do you have to go soon to, or…" He let the question trail off, open ended and hopeful.

Hinata bit her lip as she thought. She technically did have a few more hours of free time left today, so she could stay out a little longer, but she didn't want to impose now that her reason for coming over to Konohamaru's house was over. When she told him as much, he waved her concerns off with a laugh.

"Don't worry about it! I love having you here! And my mom likes you too, so you don't have to feel like you're intruding. Say, do you think you could stay and have supper with us? You could even meet my dad 'cause he's always at work and I don't think you've seen him yet! Wait, let me ask my mom first. I'll be right back!"

He darted out of his room and down the hallway, yelling for his mother and leaving Hinata alone in the middle of his room, looking helplessly around her at all the decorations that made her think of Konohamaru. When he was there with her, Hinata felt like it was natural, but now that she was all by herself, surrounded by his most private things, it felt like she was intruding and she felt a wave of uncertainty start to take over her stomach with cramping nausea. She didn't belong here; she didn't have the right to stand in this private place. She should leave, but Konohamaru had told her to wait and that he'd be right back, so she was caught in an uncomfortable limbo until he shoved open the door with a grin.

"My mom says you can stay and have dinner with us if you want!" His grin slightly waned as he took in the nervous expression on her face. "I mean, don't feel obligated to. It's just an option. You can go home too if that would make you more comfortable."

Konohamaru had obviously misinterpreted Hinata's nervousness, so she forced a smile - which was much easier with him back in the room - to assuage his fears. "I'd, um, love to stay for dinner. I just need to ask my Father first if it's okay. I'm usually supposed to be home by then."

The grin immediately returned to Konohamaru's face, and he grabbed her and pulled her out into the living room, unconsciously taking away the biggest source of her stress as well. "Awesome! Call him, call him!"

Hinata had to hide a smile at Konohamaru's exuberance as she pulled out her phone and dialed her father's number. It rang only twice before he picked up.

"Hinata? What is it? What's wrong? Did something happen? Do you need me to come pick you up? Where's Neji? Did-?"

"Um-m, n-nothing's wrong!" Hinata managed to get out in the face of the barrage of questions, her nerves skyrocketing again and making her stutter, which had almost disappeared except for tiny hints of it here and there after their singing session, come back full force. A slight twinge of mixed anger and hurt pulled at her heart at the mention of her cousin. "I'm still at K-Konohamaru's."

There was a full three seconds of silence before her father spoke again. "Oh. What is it, then?"

"Um, K-Konohamaru invited me to s-stay and have s-supper with his f-family, and I w-wanted to m-make sure that was… okay."

"Supper?" The frown in his voice was palpable. "How late would that be?"

"L-let me ask."

When she turned to Konohamaru and repeated the question, he said, "Probably about six. We tend to eat a little later because my dad works a later shift."

After relaying the information back to her Father, Hinata asked again, "Is that-t okay?"

"That's a little late at night to be walking home all by yourself, Hinata," her father said slowly, and Hinata felt her heart plummet.

On the other side of her, Konohamaru offered, "It it makes him feel better, Hinata, I can walk you home."

Here was a beat on the other end of the phone before Hinata's father spoke again, cutting her off preemptively. "Was that your friend?"

"Y-yes."

"Tell him that having a strange young man I don't know much about walking my daughter home late at night does not, in any way, make me feel any more secure about this situation."

Hinata's entire face went beet red. "F-Father! He's not-! I can take care of myself, you know!"

"Hinata, I know you had some measure of success yesterday, but you've never been out this late before. Maybe some other time-"

"Please, Father!"

Perhaps it was the fact that Hinata never asked for anything, or maybe it was the strength of her voice, but after a few seconds of silence, her father sighed in aquiessence. "I suppose so. Just make sure you're home by nine, understand?"

"Yes, Father! I will!"

"Good." After a pause, he added gruffly, "Have a good time."

"I will! Thank you so much!"

The line went dead, and Hinata turned back to Konohamaru excitedly. "He said I can stay! I just have to be home by nine."

Grinning, Konohamaru hugged her. "Awesome! I think we can manage that. Come on, I gotta help my mom set the table. Let's bug her while she's cooking and steal things before they're ready."

* * *

Hinata had never, to her knowledge, seen any of her family cook, let alone cook like Konohamaru's mother did. Their family meals were always prepared by a cook and served to them on plates already set up in proportions, but Konohamaru's mother took a more direct approach, slapping the few pots of food she had cooked directly onto the center of the table and sticking utensils for serving into them. There was a meatloaf, something that Hinata had never eaten before in her life and was wholly confused by the concept - meat was meat; how could it be bread as well? - a bowl of slightly lumpy mashed potatoes that Konohamaru's mother had convinced Hinata to help mash with results that were only semi-disastrous, and a pot full of steamed frozen green beans. Konohamaru, true to his word, had kept trying to steal things before they were done, though that was mostly limited to bits of pre-smashed potato because he didn't want to get burned on the green beans while they were cooking or, in his words, "poison himself" with the raw meat.

Konohamaru's father, when he had come home to see an extra plate set at the table, had blinked in silence at first, then Hinata, then shrugged and sat down at his place. Hinata got the impression that he was a quiet but thoughtful man, and while Konohamaru looked like his father, his personality more closely matched the cheerful manner with which his mother spearheaded the conversation during dinner. The meal itself was a jovial affair, and Hinata found herself smiling often despite her nervousness around the two strange adults. After being cued by Konohamaru, they did their best to make her feel comfortable and didn't remark on the latent return of her stutter, though she could see in their eyes that they were clearly curious.

After they were finished eating, Hinata tried to offer to help wash the dishes when she saw Konohamaru's mother stand up and start collecting them, but she waved her away, saying that it was getting late and that Hinata ought to start heading home before it got too dark out to walk alone safely. Konohamaru instantly agreed and picked up his dishes, crashing through what was obviously his portion of the chores before helping Hinata gather the few things she'd brought with her. He even grabbed her rain jacket and held it out to help her put it on, and Hinata blushed at the sweetness of the simple gesture. When it came time for her to leave, he called a brief, "Be right back!" over his shoulder and held the door open for her.

It wasn't raining outside, but the overcast sky made it clear that precipitation was always a possibility. Hinata played with the hood of her raincoat, unsure if she should flip it up over her head yet or if that would be rude, considering that Konohamaru clearly looked like he wanted to talk to her about something, and considering the fact that he'd followed her outside, it was something he probably didn't want his parents overhearing.

Konohamaru flashed her a smile, but Hinata had seen enough of them now to notice that it held a slightly nervous air. "So, tell me the truth: did you actually enjoy singing with us this afternoon, or were you just humoring us? I promise I won't be mad."

"N-no, I had fun!" Hinata quickly assured him. "It felt really good to finally be able to t-talk without worrying about tripping over the s-sounds, even if it was just singing."

"In that case…" He skuffed one of his feet against the sidewalk, and Hinata suddenly got the idea that Konohamaru was just as nervous about the prospect of asking the question as Hinata was waiting for the words to fall from his lips. "Do you think you'd ever want to sing with us more?"

Was that it? Hinata blinked. "What do you mean? Sing Summertime again with you three, or another song?"

"No, actually what I had in mind was more along the lines of… singing with the whole band."

The air in Hinata's lungs turned to some unbreathable mass, but Konohamaru kept talking, seemingly unnoticing of the change in Hinata's bodily functions.

"I mean, it's been a few years since we've had a vocalist, so everyone's been talking about finding someone to take their place. And Moegi and Udon both thought you had potential too, so it's not just my bias. I know you're shy, but won't you at least consider it?"

Hinata finally struggled through the solid air in her lungs enough to form a coherent response. "I- I c-can't. S-s-sor-ry, b-but I j-just c-can't-"

His eyes widening as he realized the effect his question was having on her, Konohamaru grabbed Hinata's shoulders. "Hinata, are you okay?"

"Stage f-fright!" Hinata finally gasped out, and Konohamaru's eyes widened before his shoulders sagged in a dejected slump.

"So there's no chance of it, then? That's okay. Sorry I asked and made you uncomfortable."

Something fell out of the bottom of Hinata's stomach when she saw the disappointment etched onto Konohamaru's face, and though her insides were still tied in knots, she found herself saying, "Well, m-maybe I could manage a r-rehearsal…"

"Really?" Konohamaru's face brightened back up again, and he grabbed her face in both his hands. "You would really…? Just for…? Even though you're nervous? Hinata, I could just-"

Then he stopped in the middle of his sentence, an almost imperceptible frown creasing the skin between his eyebrows as whatever words he had been about to say sunk into his own brain. Both of his hands cupped her jaw, cradling it tenderly, and Hinata found herself swallowing delicately in nervousness and feeling the way the pressure of his fingers tightened at the sensation. His mouth, open from cutting off mid word, slowly closed, then a look of determination overtook his face and he nodded sharply to himself once before locking his gaze with Hinata's.

"Hinata, I think it's fairly obvious how I feel about you, but I'm going to be completely honest and say it out loud: I think you're the sweetest girl I've ever met and I really like you, and it would make me really happy if you felt the same way about me. I've liked you from pretty much the first second I saw you, and I don't want to keep it in anymore." One of his hands slipped back to hold the back of her neck, and the thumb of other brushed against her lower lip. "I'm sorry for being so sudden, but I've been thinking about this for a long time. Can I… kiss you?"

Hinata was too frozen to answer Konohamaru's question in words, but perhaps he understood that and took whatever he saw in her eyes for permission instead, leaning forward until he could kiss her with a delicate pressure, no harder than the sensation of butterfly wings dancing across her lips. Her eyelids drifted shut at the gentleness of it, so it was a surprise to her when the pressure of the kiss suddenly increased, then an even greater surprise when she realized that that was because she had leaned forward into the kiss, and one of her hands had even developed a grip in the fabric of Konohamaru's t-shirt. Seeing Hinata's momentary lapse of judgement as a sign of acquiescence, Konohamaru pulled her a little closer until their knees brushed together, and Hinata pulled herself away like someone prying apart the two shells of a mussel.

"I- I'm s-sorry, b-but…"

"Was that too fast?" The look on Konohamaru's face was a little stricken. "I didn't mean to push that much."

"No, that-t's… I d-don't… I c-can't…" Hinata stuttered along with her confused emotions before she finally summoned the willpower to push Konohamaru away entirely, breaking all physical contact with him. "I'm engaged!"

He blinked once, twice, the strange rejection slowly registering on his face. "But… you're sixteen."

"Arranged m-marriage; please understand," she begged, grasping both his hands in her own as she sought to make him understand what she didn't fully understand herself. "Not yet, b-but when I'm eighteen… family m-marriage… I'm s-sorry, Konohamaru, because I-" She stopped herself a split second before saying _I like you, too_ ; those emotions, she was not allowed to feel. "I just… I'm s-sorry."

Confusion flickered across Konohamaru's face before his expression settled on anger and he pulled his hands out of Hinata's grasp. "You know, you could have just told me no without making up that lie."

"L-lie?" Hinata's breath caught in her throat. "You… you don't believe me?"

"Why would I? People don't have arranged marriages anymore. The least you could have done if you were going to lie to me was make it believable. "

"But I… I…" Hinata suddenly felt her cheeks wet, and touching it, she found it damp with tears. "I h-have to g-go."

She turned and ran away down the street without looking at Konohamaru, hoping it would rain to cover up the tears tracing their way down her face. A crack of thunder was the only warning she got to pull her hood up before the skies answered her prayers.

* * *

 _From Moegi: Alright, Romeo, how did it go?_

 _From Udon: Can it, Moegi. Did she say she wants to sing more with us?_

 _Moegi: That's not the important part. Did you tell her how you feel? How'd she react?_

 _Moegi: HELLOOOOOOOOOO! Are you dead?_

 _Udon: Maybe it's a good thing he's not responding to us._

 _Moegi: KONOHAMARU I SWEAR TO CHRIST WHAT IS GOING ON THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME!_

 _Konohamaru: I don't want to talk about it._

 _Moegi: HE LIVES!_

 _Moegi: Wait, what? What happened?_

 _Konohamaru: Forget it. I said I didn't want to talk about it._

 _Moegi: That's not like you, Konohamaru. What's going on?_

 _Udon: Yeah, buddy. You're never like this. What happened?_

 _Konohamaru: I said I didn't want to talk about it!_

 _Moegi: If you actually didn't want to talk about it, you would have ignored the notifications instead of telling us you "don't want to talk about it". So spill, Konohamaru._

 _Moegi: Don't make me come over there, Konohamaru._

 _Konohamaru: It's not that easy. I'm not even sure I know what happened, and I'm really pissed right now._

 _Udon: That bad?_

 _Konohamaru: You have no idea._

 _Moegi: So tell us!_

 _Konohamaru: I don't know where to start._

 _Moegi: The beginning. What happened after we left?_

 _Konohamaru: I invited her to stay for dinner._

 _Udon: And she didn't stay?_

 _Konohamaru: No, she stayed._

 _Moegi: What when wrong, then? Did your parents embarrass her? Stutter come back?_

 _Konohamaru: No, that was fine too. She met my dad and even laughed a bit at his jokes._

 _Udon: Then help us out, buddy, because I don't see what you're so upset about._

 _Moegi: Yeah, it sounds like it was going perfectly?_

 _Udon: Did she react badly to you asking her to sing with the band?_

 _Konohamaru: Actually, that didn't go too badly either. She said she has bad stage fright and didn't want to sing in a concert, but she agreed to come to a rehearsal to meet everyone else and maybe sing a little there, at least._

 _Udon: That sounds like a win then?_

 _Konohamaru: But I don't know if that's still on the table after what happened after that._

 _Moegi: OH MY FUCKING GOD KONOHAMARU JUST SPIT IT OUT ALREADY OR I WILL COME OVER THERE AND BEAT IT OUT OF YOU WITH YOUR OWN TRUMPET CASE!_

 _Konohamaru: I told her I liked her and she made it very clear that she wasn't interested and ran away, so I think that speaks for itself._

 _Udon: Really? Hinata did that?_

 _Moegi: Did she say she didn't like you? Point blank?_

 _Konohamaru: Not exactly, but she didn't need to._

 _Moegi: Okay, tell us exactly what happened, what you did and what her reaction to it was._

 _Konohamaru: Fine. Just give me a second to type it all up._

 _Udon: We'll wait._

 _Konohamaru: So it started out pretty great, right? I was asking her about singing with our band and she looked really scared, then she did that kinda steeling herself thing that just makes me go nuts and she just says she'll try a rehearsal and see where that went. I was just excited and I don't really remember what I said, but I think I hugged her or something and then all of a sudden we were just really close and I couldn't think right so it all kinda just… slipped out, and then I asked her if I could kiss her. She didn't say anything, but you know how she is so I didn't think she was going to and she had this look on her face that was kinda nervous but also really happy so I just decided to go with it, right? So I kiss her and - get this! - SHE KISSES ME BACK, then she pushes me away and weaves me some stupid fucking lie about how she can't because she's engaged or some shit which obviously isn't true because she's even younger then I am, and then she just fucking runs away and leaves me there!_

 _Moegi: YOU KISSED HER!_

 _Moegi: AND SHE KISSED YOU BACK!_

 _Moegi: OH MY GOD THAT'S AMAZING!_

 _Udon: Focus, Moegi. That's not the point of this story._

 _Moegi: Sorry._

 _Udon: So she lied to you? Why?_

 _Konohamaru: To get rid of me without having to reject me, of course!_

 _Moegi: But how do you know that?_

 _Konohamaru: Because what other motive would she have? I mean, it's pretty obvious that I'm not good enough for her. Even Neji threatened to beat me up if I so much as breathed in her direction._

 _Udon: I guess that's a fair point. Neji refused to tell us what his family does, but it's pretty clear they either come from money or prestige._

 _Konohamaru: There was no need to rub it in like that, Udon._

 _Udon: It's the truth, though, isn't it?_

 _Moegi: Wait, Konohamaru, you said she said she was engaged?_

 _Konohamaru: Yeah. Pretty stupid lie, right? At least she could have thought of a better one if she was going to fib like that._

 _Moegi: What exactly did she say?_

 _Konohamaru: I don't know, like a bunch of stuff that didn't sound right, about arranged marriage and stuff. But that kind of stuff doesn't happen anymore._

 _Moegi: Did you accuse her of lying to her face? And did she run away after that? Was she crying?_

 _Konohamaru: Yeah, I called her on it, and she ran away. I don't know if she was crying. I was too pissed at that point to care. Why does that matter?_

 _Moegi: KONOHAMARU THIS IS BAD_

 _Moegi: I DON'T THINK THAT WAS A LIE_

 _Moegi: NEJI TOLD ME THE OTHER DAY THAT HE'S BEING FORCED INTO AN ARRANGED MARRIAGE AND THAT'S WHY HE'S BEEN ACTING SO WEIRD LATELY_

 _Moegi: I WASN'T SUPPOSED TO TELL YOU BUT THIS IS MORE IMPORTANT_

 _Moegi: IT WOULDN'T BE THAT MUCH OF A STRETCH TO THINK THAT HINATA WAS FACING ONE TOO_

 _Konohamaru: But those kinds of things don't happen anymore!_

 _Moegi: BUT WE DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THEIR FAMILY_

 _Moegi: IT COULD BE TRUE_

 _Udon: You have to apologize to her!_

 _Konohamaru: I don't have to apologize to her!_

 _Moegi: YES YOU DO_

 _Moegi: APOLOGIZE RIGHT NOW_

 _Moegi: BEFORE SHE HATES YOU FOREVER_

 _Moegi: IF SHE DOESN'T ALREADY_

 _Moegi: BOY, YOU DONE FUCKED UP_

 _Udon: Caps lock, please, Moegi. Turn it off._

 _Moegi: Sorry._

 _Moegi: But my statement still stands. You need to apologize to her before too much time goes by, or she'll never forgive you._

 _Konohamaru: I don't need her to forgive me! She's the one who lied to me, remember?!_

 _Moegi: YOU FUCKING IDIOT DIDN'T YOU LISTEN TO ANYTHING I JUST SAID?_

 _Moegi: Sorry Udon, I had to._

 _Moegi: SHE DIDN'T LIE TO YOU! SHE WAS TRYING TO TELL YOU SOMETHING IMPORTANT AND YOU DIDN'T BELIEVE HER, THEN YOU MADE HER CRY AND SHE RAN AWAY! SHE_ RAN AWAY _KONOHAMARU! IT IS NEVER GOOD WHEN GIRLS RUN AWAY!_

 _Udon: It means they either never want to see you again, or they want you to chase after them._

 _Moegi: We can only hope that Hinata is one of the latter types._

 _Konohamaru: You guys really think she wasn't lying about that?_

 _Moegi: YES!_

 _Udon: Konohamaru, I'm surprised that you're being this thick-headed about this, considering how you thought the sun rose and set according to her whims just four hours ago. Yes, she was telling the truth!_

 _Konohamaru: ..._

 _Konohamaru: …_

 _Konohamaru: …_

 _Konohamaru: Shit._

 _Moegi: Finally._

 _Udon: Now what are you going to do to fix this?_


	41. I Believe You

Hinata managed to get herself home, say goodnight to her father, and make it into her room before she completely broke down. In the darkness on her bed with her face pressed into her pillow so no one passing down the hallway would hear her wrenching sobs, she finally allowed her body to let everything out all at once. All the stress of the last few days ripped through her body and onto her pillow in the form of her tears, leaving her feeling weak against her comforter.

Not that she hadn't thought this before, but it just wasn't fair! It wasn't fair that Neji had known about their engagement for three years and hadn't told her, it wasn't fair that he fought against the decision, it wasn't fair that the people on the hotline hadn't believed her just because she sounded young and inexperienced, it wasn't fair that Konohamaru had kissed her-!

Okay, that one had been a little fair, especially since she had kissed him back. But it wasn't fair that he had gotten so angry when she pushed him away after that! And that he'd… he'd… Hinata curled up a little tighter and fought off another sob.

It wasn't fair that her family asked too much of her. It wasn't fair that she couldn't do anything right, no matter how hard she tried. It wasn't fair that no one would ever really care about her, because they'd always be focused on how weak she was.

In the lapse between sobs, when the rush in Hinata's ears that came from muffling the sounds of her pain disappeared, she suddenly heard her phone buzz on the desk next to her bed. She really didn't want to expend the energy to look at it right now, but there was always the chance that it could be something important. Or Neji. With a sniffle, she reached for the phone and hit the button to look at the notification.

She threw it back across the room when she saw the message was from Konohamaru without even bothering to read what it said. There was no way she wanted to hear anything from him right now.

Her phone buzzed again, but this time it kept buzzing, a sign that he was trying to call her. Hinata curled up and shoved her pillow over her ears to block the sound, but somehow it made it through the thin fabric and penetrated into her ears, pushing long metal nails into her skull. As soon as it stopped buzzing, the pain in her head retreated, but almost as soon as she'd finally begun to relax it started up again, a short tone this time that meant he was trying to text her again. She shook her head against her pillow; she wasn't about to give in, but it was followed by another text buzz, then another, then the longer vibration of another phone call and the longer it went on, the harder it became to ignore.

Eventually Hinata couldn't take it anymore and she hurled her pillow on the floor on top of her phone, but even that didn't muffle the sound, so she threw her legs over the side of the bed and marched to her phone, intending to silence it for good, or maybe block Konohamaru's number, if she could figure out how to do that. The screen glowed as another text was delivered when she picked it up, and despite herself, Hinata scrolled to the bottom and read the notifications in the order they had come.

 _Message from Konohamaru: Hinata I'm really sorry I yelled at you earlier. Can we talk please?_

 _One Missed Call from Konohamaru_

 _Message from Konohamaru: Okay I know you're probably mad at me, but please pick up. I'm really sorry._

 _Message from Konohamaru: I didn't mean to make you cry. I was mad at the time but I'm really sorry I called you a liar without listening to what you were saying. Please don't ignore me._

 _Message from Konohamaru: I really really want to talk to you, Hinata. Please don't shut me out when I'm trying to apologize._

 _One Missed Call from Konohamaru_

 _Message from Konohamaru: Hinata, I really like you and even if you don't like me back, I don't want my mistakes to ruin our friendship. Please pick up. I'm begging you._

Suddenly the screen lit up with an incoming call, the sudden vibration of the phone jumping Hinata so her thumb accidentally hit the answer call button. Konohamaru's voice floated out of the speaker.

"Hinata? Oh God, I didn't think you'd actually pick up!"

"I… I d-didn't m-mean to," she said quietly under her breath, not sure if Konohamaru would be able to catch it. She hadn't wanted to talk to him, but now that he was on the other end of the line, she didn't have the courage to hang up.

"Hinata, I wanted to say that-"

The rest of his words were drowned out by what sounded like a gust of wind and pelting rain, and Hinata frowned.

"Are you… outsid-de?"

"Um… yeah. About that." Konohamaru gave a nervous little laugh. "You live in that building I picked you up at, right? The one I always thought was a school or some weird cult church or something?"

 _Some weird cult church_. Well, that pretty much summed up the Hyuuga estate. Hinata's frown only deepened. "Y-yes. Wh-why?"

"Can you tell me which window is yours?"

Hinata's hand flew to her mouth to mask her gasp. He couldn't…! He wouldn't…! She flew to her window and pulled aside the curtain to look out on the small yard that bordered the sidewalk, fenced in with a wrought iron gate. On the opposite side of a gate was a figure impossible to tell the identity of because of the rain and the darkness, but even from this distance Hinata could tell that the person was talking into a phone.

"You c-can't…! You have t-to-!"

"Oh, I see you! I'll be right there!"

"No! Konohamaru-!"

But Konohamaru had already vaulted over the fence and his feet were planted securely in the grass, deep in territory forbidden to any but a Hyuuga. Hinata flinched and sucked in a terrified breath, expecting floodlights and expulsion and the very least and instant death at the worst, but nothing happened and Konohamaru jogged towards her window. She drew back when he got close enough that she could make out his expression, and she saw that he was soaked completely to the bone.

"Wh-why aren't you w-wearing a j-jacket?!"

Konohamaru shrugged sheepishly, his phone pressed against his ear as he looked at her through the glass of her window. "It wasn't raining when I left, and besides, I wasn't thinking much beyond getting here." He swallowed a little nervously, tracks of rain following the curves of his throat as they dripped down his neck. "But now that I'm here, do you think you could let me in? It's getting kind of cold."

Hinata drew back instinctively at the request; if the yard was territory forbidden to any but a Hyuuga, the house was doubly - triply - so. If anyone ever found out that he had even made it this far and Hinata hadn't stopped him, both of them were going to be in so much trouble that it made her shiver to even think about it. Seeing her shiver and mistaking it as distaste for himself, Konohamaru's face fell.

"I guess you still don't want to have anything to do with me. I guess that's fair."

"That's n-not… I don't…" Hinata reached out and laid a hand on the glass, and with widening eyes, Konohamaru mirrored her so they were palm to palm with nothing but the pane of glass between them. "I'm n-not supposed to… and not just m-me, this whole h-house is forbidden… I d-don't want you to get in t-trouble, so you should p-probably go before someone sees you…"

"I'm not going until I say what I came to say," Konohamaru said quietly, his eyes for once serious and boring into Hinata's with a force that drew her closer to the window.

His arm, braced against the glass, was shaking. Unable to stand it any longer as more rivulets of water ran down his already soaked shirt, Hinata finally gave in and flicked the latch on her window open. Konohamaru's eyes widened as she struggled to push up the sash, then he grabbed onto the bottom and helped her pull it open so he could crawl through the small opening she had created.

Hinata could only send up grateful thanks for the fact that her bedroom was on the first floor and Konohamaru didn't have to climb up a drainpipe or something equally as stupid in dangerous weather like this. He turned around and closed the window, then hit the end call button on his phone and stood in the middle of her floor, dripping awkwardly.

"So, um… I think this was probably not the best way to do it, but I really needed to talk to you, Hinata. I-"

She cut him off raising a hand. "N-not so loud! Father will m-murder you if he find you here."

"He can't be that bad, right?"

At the shake of Hinata's head, Konohamaru paled. "Don't p-push it. He just m-might decide society no longer needs your presence, and he p-probably has enough p-power to make you disappear."

"You're serious? And I thought he was scary before." Konohamaru shivered, but Hinata noticed the way the water dripped off his elbow when he pushed his sodden hair out of his eyes and decided that it wasn't just nerves that was making him shiver.

"Why are you such a d-dummy?" She whispered under her breath as she backed away from him and fetched a towel from her closet. It was fluffy, pink and girly and not at all Konohamaru's style, but it would have to do. In a slightly louder voice, she held out the towel to him and said, "H-here. Don't d-drip on the bed."

All of a sudden, Konohamaru's eyes widened as if he'd just seen the slightly rumpled bed for the first time and realized that he was inside Hinata's bedroom. He quickly dropped the towel over his head, hiding his expression before Hinata could get a good look. A muffled, "Thanks, Hinata," rumbled out from beneath the towel as he started to dry his hair.

Hinata looked over at the radiator on the far wall. Right now, it was drying her raincoat, but that was probably good enough for today and she could switch it for something of Konohamaru's, since he was obviously in greater need of it than her. As he dried his hair, she moved the raincoat to drape from the back of her desk chair and rummaged around in her closet to find a sweatshirt of Neji's that he'd left here one day and never bothered to reclaim since he didn't wear them often. She'd forgotten it was there too until this moment. It should fit Konohamaru.

"H-here." She shoved the sweatshirt in his direction without looking at him. "It sh-should be big enough."

He looked down at it in his grasp for a second before his hands bunched in the fabric. "Is this… this isn't yours, right?"

"No way. It's way t-too b-big. It's Neji's… or p-probably was at one p-point. It's been here for at least a f-few years."

"Good." With a guilty look in her direction, Konohamaru slid his shirt over his head and quickly replaced it with the towel around his shoulders to sop up the extra water.

Good? What did Konohamaru mean by that? Trying her best not to look at him while he was shirtless lest her cheeks burn brighter than they already were, Hinata held her hands out for the soaking shirt he was still holding. After a brief moment's hesitation, Konohamaru deposited the shirt in her outstretched hand, and Hinata could see out of the corner of her vision that he was avoiding looking in her direction as well.

Turning her back so she wouldn't have to look at the sight of her pink towel wrapped around his surprisingly broad shoulders, Hinata stretched the soaking wet shirt over the heater to dry, and immediately it began to warm, and she even thought she saw hints of steam curling up from the fabric. After taking a deep breath to steal herself against anything she might see, Hinata turned around again, and let it out again in relief when she realized that Konohamaru had already slipped the sweatshirt over his head in place of the damp garment he'd discarded. It wasn't a perfect fit, loose on some places and tight in others, like the seam that ran under his arms that looked like it was about to rip open every time he lifted his hands higher than his shoulders, but it was dry and that was all that mattered. Hinata wasn't about to let anyone catch cold when it could easily be prevented, even when it was someone who had just broken into her house and she'd spent the better part of the evening balling her eyes out over.

She had million things she wanted to say to him, but wasn't brave enough for even the least of them, so she went with a simple question. "Is it c-comfortable?"

"It's better than before." Konohamaru took a step towards her. "I'm really sorry for barging in on you like this, Hinata, but I absolutely had to talk to you and you weren't answering your phone."

"I d-didn't want to t-talk to you."

Her answer drew Konohamaru to an abrupt stop. "That's… fair. Still, I need to talk to you. I know you're mad at me right now, but I didn't want to take the chance that that would turn into you hating me by tomorrow morning."

"And what if it's already t-to late?"

Konohamaru drew in a sharp breath through his nose, but didn't back down. "Then I'll still say what I came here to say and hope it changes your mind. But it's up to you to let that happen."

Hinata didn't really want to hear what Konohamaru had to say. After he had kissed her and with the announcement of her engagement so close, she knew that even their friendship would be reproached in anyone found out about what happened, not to mention that she was still very upset that of all things to get mad about, he hadn't believed her when she'd said she was engaged. There was a fair amount of tears still dampening her pillow that spoke testament to that pain. But the frankness in his voice won some small measure of forgiveness in her heart, and Hinata sat down on the floor with a sigh, motioning for Konohamaru to sit opposite her.

"What d-did you want to talk to me about?"

Scrambling to follow her down to the floor, Konohamaru sat down cross legged in front of her and leaned in. "Hinata, I'm really sorry about the way I acted earlier. It was immature of me and I hate that I hurt you. Please, tell me what I can do to help you forgive me."

Shivering, Hinata wrapped her arms around herself. "You c-can st-start by… by _b-believing_ me wh-when I t-tell you something!"

Konohamaru leaned further forward in concern, and he looked like he would have reached out to touch Hinata's face if she hadn't flinched away at his sudden nearness. "Hinata, are you… crying?"

Reaching up to touch her own cheeks, Hinata discovered that they were, in fact, damp with tears. She angrily swiped them away, but that only served to make more fall to take their place. "I'm f-f-fine. I don't… you shouldn't…"

"Hinata…" Konohamaru reached for her again, and this time Hinata didn't flinch away when he pulled her into a hug and smoothed down the back of her hair. "I'm so sorry I didn't believe you. Let me tell you what," he said pulling back and wiping a tear under her eye away with his thumb. "Why don't you tell me anything you want right now? Anything, true or not, and I promise I'll believe it, no matter how crazy it is. How does that sound?"

Truth to be told, Hinata didn't really want to do it. She could see a hundred or more ways that this could go wrong, but the ernest look in Konohamaru's eyes was debilitating to her self-restraint, so she found herself nodding before she knew what she was doing.

"F-fine."

Konohamaru scooted forward until his knees brushed against Hinata's. The contact made her want to pull away, but she didn't and took a deep breath to speak.

"I'm engaged. I j-just f-found out about it yesterday."

Hinata could tell that Konohamaru had expected her to return to this topic and didn't relish the thought, but he made no complaints, just sat there and listened to her.

"N-not very many people know. It's being announced next w-week. In my family… everyone's marriage is arranged."

Konohamaru nodded, his expression serious. "I believe you, I swear I do. I'm sorry I didn't believe you the first time you told me."

"I'm not d-done yet." Hinata noticed that her fingers were twisting the hem of her shirt, and she forced them to let go. Her grasp felt empty without something to hold onto. "I've never told a lie in my life except for the ones required by my family to protect us."

"Protect…" Konohamaru's eyes widened. "Hinata, did you ever tell me what your family does? You're not in the mafia, are you?"

"N-no!" Despite the laugh Konohamaru's question brought to the surface, Hinata felt a sudden surge of panic in her stomach. This was dipping dangerously close to forbidden territory. "We're just… very c-close. Every family has their s-secrets."

She could tell that Konohamaru knew there was more to the situation than she was letting on, but true to his promise he said nothing else except, "Okay, I believe you. Is there anything else you wanted to say?"

"One m-more thing." Leveling her gaze so that she could see directly into Konohamaru's eyes, Hinata said, "I can see ghosts."

Konohamaru didn't believe her; Hinata could see it in the change in his eyes, the way they sparkled a little bit and his mouth curled up with hidden laughter. Though he'd gone against his promise, Hinata couldn't help but feel relief: if the look in his eyes had changed to disbelief during her statement, it meant that he had wholeheartedly believed everything else she'd said.

"O… kay," he said, drawing the word out slowly as he fought to keep back a laugh. "I believe you. Is that it?"

Hinata's shoulders sagged slightly. She couldn't say that she was surprised that Konohamaru didn't believe her; after all, normal people didn't believe in ghosts. Still it smarted just the tiniest bit, but she pushed it deep down inside and didn't let it show on her face. "Yeah, that's… that's it."

"Hinata." Konohamaru reached forward to trace the curve of her cheek, the hidden laughter melting away from his face to be replaced by a serious expression. "I'm sorry I didn't believe you. I'm sorry I accused you of lying to me just because I was… well, I was jealous. What can I do to make it up to you?"

Leaning back so that her face was out of reach of Konohamaru's hands, Hinata said sharply, "You can start by not t-touching me."

There was something that withered in Konohamaru's face when he withdrew his hand, but it was replaced by an expression of determination. "I get it. You don't trust me anymore, not after I… I just have to rebuild that trust before we can go back to the way we were before."

"The way we were before…" A bubbling feeling overtook Hinata's chest at the thought, but she shook her head. "N-no. We can't b-be like that anymore. I don't want…" She trailed off into uncomfortable silence, unable to in good conscious finish the statement with the sentiment her mind and heart both wanted to express.

Konohamaru, for his part, looked stricken. "You mean… we can't be friends anymore?"

"No, that's n-not what I meant!" Hinata quickly assured him, and this time she found that she was the one reaching forward to place a reassuring touch on Konohamaru's arm. "Of c-course I still want to be your friend- more than anything I still want to be your friend. But things have changed. I c-can't… I'm n-not allowed… we can't be like we were before, at the sleepover? They would say that I'm… I'm d-disrespecting my engagement."

"Disrespecting your engagement…" Konohamaru shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I'm still really confused about a lot of this. Like I get that you're, what, betrothed or something? But why? Don't most people marry later into their twenties nowadays? Why so early when you've got so many years to go?"

"Because… b-because…" Hinata hesitated; she wasn't supposed to talk about family secrets with anyone outside the family, but perhaps if she was vague enough she might be able to satisfy his questions. "Because it won't be as m-many years as you think. I'm getting married as s-soon as I turn eighteen."

"Eighteen!" Konohamaru practically screeched, and Hinata desperately covered his mouth with a hand and shushed him, but it was already too late and the sound rang through the room.

They waited, frozen in silence, for the noise to bring someone running to the room for almost two full minutes before Hinata leaned back with a sigh and allowed her hand to slip from his mouth.

"K-keep it d-down! What d-did I t-tell you?" She whispered desperately to him, her stutter worsening from the panic still coursing through her veins.

"Sorry!" He shook his head in disbelief. "But eighteen? Why so young?"

Again, Hinata hesitated before admitting, "Because he's… quite a f-few years older than m-me."

Konohamaru's eyebrows crept up his forehead. "Older than you? Like, how much older? Ten years? More?"

"N-no! No, m-much less than th-that."

"Still…" He shook his head. "It's crazy to think you're having an arranged marriages. I thought only people who were really rich or something still got those."

Hinata remained silent, but her cheeks started to turn a darker shade of red, and Konohamaru drew in a sharp breath.

"You're not- are you?"

"N-not me p-personally," Hinata whispered, "but m-my f-family as a whole… there's s-someone who's g-good at the stock m-market…"

"Damn." Konohamaru whistled low and shook his head in disbelief. "I can't believe Neji never told me any of this before! We've known each other for years."

"Well, we aren't… really s-supposed to talk about it," Hinata muttered under her breath, looking away and breaking eye contact with Konohamaru.

"You know, everything you tell me only makes me more convinced that your family is part of the mafia."

"We r-really aren't."

Wiggling his eyebrows suggestively and grinning, he asked, "But you also said that the only lies you ever told were for your family's sake, soooooo…"

Hinata shook her head. "We're not in the m-mafia, Konohamaru. Do we l-look Italian to you?"

"I suppose that's fair enough."

Their conversation was cut abruptly short by the sound of footsteps in the hallway, approaching Hinata's door. Her eyes widening in terror, she looked around at the tell-tale signs of another person in her room, from the wet shirt drying on the heater to the open curtains and unlocked window to the substantial puddle on the floor where Konohamaru had first come through and dripped to finally Konohamaru himself, seated with Hinata on the space between the bed and the window. It was on the opposite side of the bed from the door, but if someone looked into her room it would only be a split second before they spotted him because of how tall he was, his head sticking over the top of the bed even when sitting, and how high the draping blankets were away from the floor, not enough to hide the two's presence.

Freezing up in a moment like this was not an option. Acting quickly, Hinata grabbed the quilt on her bed and yanked it sideways so it slid down and covered the gap between the bed and the floor, then she launched herself at Konohamaru and pushed him down with a hand over his mouth. She ended up of top of him, squeezing the hand over his mouth to muffle the surprised sound he made as he thudded lightly against the floor.

"Don't make a sound!" She hissed down at him, and though he didn't look quite as scared as she was, he obviously understood that her panic must be for a reason and nodded.

The footsteps drew closer, and Hinata squeezed her eyes shut and hoped that they would pass her room by, but her luck proved to the be worse for wear as they stopped in front of her door and knocked. "Hinata? Are you still awake?"

"Y-yes!" She squeaked, her heart beating so fast that she thought it might implode in her chest. Konohamaru definitely noticed the change, because he grabbed the wrist holding his mouth shut and felt her pulse with wide eyes.

"Is is alright if I come in? There's something I wanted to talk about with you."

"No!" The word escaped in a panic before she could capture it, but Hinata quickly followed it with a gasp so it wouldn't seem as suspicious. "I mean, please, no, F-Father. I… I… I'm not wearing p-pants!"

Konohamaru's eyes widened underneath her at the lie, his hand resting on the fabric of her pajama pants.

"I… see." There was a palpable frown in her father's voice. "Can you put some on so I can come in?"

"I, um… C-can't we just t-talk through the door?"

There was a beat of suspicious silence before her father spoke again. "You were crying, weren't you?"

It was true, though not recently. Hinata nodded even though her father couldn't see it. "Y-yes. I… I d-didn't want you to s-see."

"I suppose we can talk like this."

Hinata's heart jumped in relief. She never thought she'd be so grateful for the famous Hyuuga aversion to public weakness that seemed to afflict everyone but herself. "Thank you, F-Father? Wh-what did you want to t-talk about?"

"I wanted to apologize for not telling you about the engagement sooner."

Hinata's breath caught in her throat. "You m-mean… you knew, t-too?"

After a pause, he admitted, "Outside of our immediate family and the Council, I think you were the only one who didn't know."

If she wasn't so terrified in the moment, Hinata might had been mad about that. As it was, she was barely able to keep herself from throwing up from nerves-induced nausea. "Wh-why k-keep it from me f-for so l-long?"

"You know how Neji was fighting against this for so long. No one wanted to tell you in case he managed to get it repealed; of course, the chances of that happening were slim to none, but it was an eventuality that had to be prepared for."

"I… s-see."

A blossom of panic had bloomed in Hinata's chest when her father had mentioned Neji. Already, Konohamaru's gaze below her was wide and calculating, like he was absorbing every piece of forbidden information she had refused to give him. If he learned who she was engaged too…

"Hinata, are you happy?"

The question jumped her out of her thoughts. "Wh-what?"

"Are you happy? With your match with Neji?"

Hinata's grip on Konohamaru's mouth instinctively tightened as he made a small noise of surprise. "I… I… I d-don't know. I was at f-first, but N-Neji…"

"I know. I suppose that's the best we can ask for at this point. You only learned yesterday, and Neji is still upset over having lost his battle with the Council." After a pause, he added, "I think Neji will take very good care of you, though. He already loves you so much. Perhaps that's one of the reasons your grandfather was so adamant on the union."

Shaking her head desperately down at Konohamaru's wide eyes that were starting to take on an angry glint, Hinata said, "I d-don't know. N-Neji still h-hasn't spoken to me since…" _Since I ran out while the Council was in session_. But she didn't like the thought of admitting that aloud.

"He still hasn't spoken to you?" Now there was some audible anger in her father's voice. "I know he's upset, but this is being childish. I'll speak to him at once and tell him to come talk to you. The Council will arrange for formal courting between you two soon, and you don't want that to be stilted."

"No!" Hinata quickly gasped. "You d-don't have t-to-! I d-don't-! I w-want him to come t-talk to me on his own t-terms. P-please, F-Father, d-don't m-make him t-talk to me if he's s-still angry!"

"Fine," he said slowly, though clearly reluctant. "But you tell me if he still hasn't spoken to you before the announcement meeting next week, you hear? We don't want our family looking bad in front of the greater Council."

"Yes, F-Father. I will."

A sigh traversed through the door. "I suppose I should let you get some rest. Don't stay up too much later, alright, Hinata? I know you're upset, but we have to keep up appearances."

"Y-yes, Father. I will."

"Good girl." There was a pause, as if her father was contemplating saying something more, then he sighed again and Hinata heard his footsteps take a step back from the door. "Goodnight, Hinata."

"G-goodight, F-Father."

Hinata only relinquished her grip on Konohamaru's mouth when her father's footsteps had faded away down the corridor, though she did so slowly so there would be no chance for him to yell and give away his location to the retreating ears of her father.

Konohamaru pushed her off him - Hinata only belatedly realized that she had sat down on his chest in her quest to silence him and had remained there ever since - and sat up with wide, affronted eyes.

"Did I hear that right? You're marrying _Neji_?!" He hissed incredulously. "That's _disgusting,_ Hinata; he's your cousin! Who the hell arranges that kind of marriage?"

Hinata could only shrug in helpless response. She'd been raised to expect something of this sort, so it didn't have quite the impact on her as it did on him, but even she had felt a moment of initial confusion of the closeness of her relation to her intended match.

"And you're okay with that?"

"I… I d-don't know," Hinata answered, truthfully. "I'm s-supposed to be, but… this is all j-just s-so sudden." _Plus,_ she added in her head _, the feeling I'm supposed to feel for my betrothed, I'm starting to feel for… someone else._

Even in her head, she still couldn't admit it. That would be an act of treason to the Council. How did Neji do it so easily?

"Jesus." Konohamaru swore softly and shook his head. "I don't know what I expected when I decided to come here tonight, but it certainly wasn't this."

Wincing, Hinata withdrew into herself slightly. "I unders-stand. M-my f-family c-can be a b-bit m-much sometimes. If you d-didn't want to h-have anything to d-do with them, I-"

"Woah, woah!" Konohamaru held his hands up to cut off slew of stuttery babble coming from her mouth. "This isn't you trying to get rid of me, now is it?"

"N-no, of course n-not!" Hinata instinctively reached for one of Konohamaru's hands and clasped in both of her own. "I would never-! Konohamaru, I really li…"

Again, the words dried up on her tongue, and this time Hinata felt frustration begin to build up inside of her. Why couldn't she say something as simple as that? Why was she unable to be true to her own emotions?

The frustration must have shown on her face, because Konohamaru smiled at her and reached forward with the hand not currently held captive by Hinata to gently tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. "I think I get it. You're not allowed to say it outside, but I think I get what you're trying to say. God, this is a mess. I can't believe what I've gotten myself into."

"My offer of-f an escape r-route still stands," Hinata murmured disparagingly.

Konohamaru's hand squeezed hers a little tighter. "I think I can take it."

Hinata sighed, then shook her head. "Thanks for that, b-but you should probably go now. Next time someone d-decides to check in on my, we might not be as lucky as we were just now."

"That was terrifying," Konohamaru agreed, standing up. "I've never been afraid for my life before, but your father you probably convince me otherwise."

"Oh, b-believe me, the chances of you surviving if F-Father found you here are close to zero. He knows too m-many ways to make a death l-look like an accident." Hinata suddenly paused and looked at Konohamaru's expression, which had twisted into one vaguely reminiscent of someone who had taken a bite into an apple only to find an interdimensional wormhole set to suck him into another time inside. "Was that t-too much?"

"Probably, yeah. But I don't even know whether to believe you anymore." He poked her in the arm cheekily. "You told me you never lied, and then you just lied to you father back there! That sounds like a paradox to me."

"No, it's not. I said I never lied except to protect my family."

A full ten seconds of silence passed as Hinata realized what she'd just said, then slowly began to turn from a light shade of pink to a shade of red that rivaled the skin of a well-ripened tomato. At the same time, Konohamaru's grin widened until he couldn't take it anymore, then he darted forward and pulled her into a massive hug.

"Hinata! I can't believe you think of me as your family! That makes me so happy!"

"Qu-quiet!" She hissed desperately as he did his best to crush her rib cage.

"Sorry!" He apologized in a much quieter voice, then pulled back to beam at her. "I'll text you tomorrow?"

"S-sure."

Nodding, Konohamaru released Hinata and turned back to open up her window. As soon as it was cracked, the wind howled into the room blew in a good amount of rain, but Hinata's floor was already wet so she didn't care. "I know this probably isn't what you want to hear, but even with everything you said tonight, I still like you, Hinata. I'm not sorry. Talk to you tomorrow!"

He crawled out the window without waiting for her response and darted across the lawn back to the sidewalk. Hinata closed the window and watched him vault over the wrought iron fence before pulling the hood of the sweatshirt she had lent him over the top of his head and hunching down as he walked to avoid the rain. It was only then that she realized that he'd left wearing the clothes she'd given him, and in the process forgotten the shirt he'd arrived in, which was still laying across her heater. She picked it up. It was still a little damp, but very warm and smelled like trumpet valve oil, a scent she'd come to associate solely with Konohamaru.

Oh, well. She could always return it the next time she saw him.


	42. Rehearsal

Aaand I ended up taking a few days off but now we're going to be back to the once a day for at least the next few days again. I know I said this before, but it really is really close now.

And thank you to the guest that reviewed my last chapter; I can't wait to show you what Shikamaru has been thinking either!

* * *

The door was closed in front of her, but from behind it Hinata could hear the sounds of several instruments playing along to some tune she didn't recognize. One of the lower instruments let out an unflattering blat of sound, and the group dissolved into laughter, during which she caught the names of both Moegi and Udon.

Well, she couldn't use the excuse of not knowing if she was in the right place now. Hinata glanced at the time again, and ascertained that it was now almost two minutes passed the time she'd agreed to meet the group Konohamaru played with to see if she wanted to sing with them, meaning that she'd been standing there in front of the door, too nervous to push it inwards, for eight and a half minutes. She was running out of excuses not to go in, though, so screwing up her face in determination, Hinata pushed the door open and stepped inside.

No one noticed her presence for a solid thirty seconds as she closed the door behind her and stood awkwardly next to it, then suddenly Moegi saw her and waved. "Hey! Hinata! You made it!"

Konohamaru instantly spun around, his trumpet still raised to his mouth, and grinned at her around the instrument. "Hinata! We were waiting for you!"

Moegi cuffed him on the back of the head, causing his teeth to clack against his mouthpiece in a way that made even Hinata, halfway across the room, wince. "Idiot, don't make her nervous. You would have thought that you'd learned this lesson by now."

Giggling a little, Hinata made her was across the vast expanse of the floor - too vast with everyone's eyes on her, her mind kept telling her; for every step forwards she took, it seemed like she was slipping backwards at least three - to her friends. "It's f-fine. S-sorry I'm a f-few m-minutes l-late."

Well, she'd already dropped the ball on trying to hide her stutter from the group, who were now all looking at her with even stranger expressions, as if wondering how someone with a stutter could possibly manage to sing a single note.

Thankfully, though, neither Udon nor Moegi had any visible reactions to the increased ferocity of her speech impediment, and though Konohamaru's gaze became tinged with sympathy, he remained unfazed as well, so the others in the room took their cue from the three of them and nobody remarked on it. They all took their seats, and Konohamaru pointed at each one individually and named them for Hinata.

"Everybody, this is Hinata! Okay, Hinata, you know myself, Udon, and Moegi, and then Kurenai back there is the keyboardist, next to Asuma, who's our drum set player, and then there's…"

Hinata had to admit that she glazed over after the first few names, just nodding and letting her gaze slide off the faces presented to her. Even if she couldn't blame it on nerves, she just wasn't good with memorizing faces, not with as little experience as she'd had meeting people. When the introductions were done, she nodded with a shell-shocked numbness in her gut and looked around for her chair. She didn't see one.

"Um, wh-where do I s-sit?" She squeaked.

"Huh?" Konohamaru cast a glance around. "Do you need one? The vocalist usually stands, but we could get you one if you want it."

Great. Just one more thing to set her apart from the rest of the group. It wasn't enough that she was already a solo in the midst of an ensemble; she also had to be isolated as well. Her knees started to shake, but she gritted her teeth in determination. "I c-can s-s-st-stand."

"Great!" Konohamaru turned back to the band. "Everyone have their music?"

Amid various mutterings of assent, Kurenai shouted from the back, "You want to lead us in this one, Konohamaru?"

Hinata swore that she could see stars dance behind Konohamaru's eyes. "Do I ever! You all ready to start? Hinata, you good? Do you need to warm up?"

Hinata wasn't even sure what that really meant, so she just shook her head. As the rest of the band shuffled their music into the correct order, he leaned in closer to speak privately with her.

"Just remember how we did it the other day with just the four of us, and you'll be fine. And since they picked me to lead this one, I'll be up next to you and I can help you out if you need anything, 'kay?"

"O… okay," Hinata said in a small voice. "Um… wh-what d-does that m-mean? L-leading?"

"Oh, it just means I'm conducting the piece. I just stand up here and yell 'three, two, one, go'. It won't be like that in a real concert."

"I… s-see." Hinata shivered. "Okay, I'm r-ready." _Let's just get this over with._

Konohamaru turned back to the orchestra with his trumpet raised to his mouth with one hand and made a series of strange movements with the other that Hinata could make neither heads nor tails of, but the rest of the band obviously could because they started playing as a group, the shifting strands of the melody Hinata had been practicing over the past week drifting from the bells of a dozen and a half separate instruments and melding into a cohesive unit.

If nothing else, Hinata was not prepared for the wall of sound that hit her from the combined forces of more instruments than she knew how to name. It hit her like a physical barrier so strongly that she almost staggered back. _I have to sing over THAT_? She vaguely remembered thinking in the small space of her brain that wasn't occupied by the pure, unadulterated sound. _There's no way anyone will ever hear me!_

Actually, the more she thought about that, the less terrible that idea seemed.

As the introduction wound down to a close, Hinata caught Konohamaru's gaze out of the corner of his eye. After shivering slightly, she kept a careful watch of his hand for her cue. It raised in the air and she took a deep breath, then it pointed at her and she started to sing.

Like the first time she'd tried it with the trio of accompanists, a few of the words close to the beginning caught and fumbled against her tongue on their way out, but after than the well-practiced lyrics flowed out smoothly The only problem was that she couldn't even hear herself sing, and she figured that if she was inaudible to her own ears, there was no chance anyone else could hear her. When the song ended, she found herself in the focus of more than a dozen pairs of eyes as the whole band regarded her with a practiced evaluating stare.

"She's not much of a powerhouse. There's no way this is going to work," Kurenai finally said, and Hinata felt her heart sink.

"I knew it-t; I'm n-no g-good. S-sorry for w-wasting your t-time-"

Kurenai held up her hands to fend off Hinata's unnecessarily awkward apology. "Woah, there, slow down! I'm sure you're fine, Hinata, we just can't hear you. I think we're going to have to break out the microphone. Moegi, you pulled that out already, right?"

Jumping to her feet with a salute, Moegi placed her saxophone on her chair and said, "Yep! I'll drag it over."

Hinata sharted to shake. "M-m-m-mic-croph-phon-ne?"

"Our band is so big that we don't think we'll be able to hear you without one," Konohamaru explained. "That's nothing on you; all our vocalists usually use one, some just prefer not to during rehearsals. But you're a different kind of singer, so I think we'll have to use one for you. Do you think you can handle that?"

"A d-different k-kind of s-singer?" Hinata said tightly, annoyed enough to let the frustration bleed through her nervous tone. "What's th-that s-supposed to m-mean?"

"Nothing!" Konohamaru quickly assured her. "People have different singing styles, and most of the people who gravitate towards jazz tend to have harsher voices then you, is all. It cuts through the sound differently. It's all to to with style, and nothing to do with skill."

All of a sudden, a microphone on a stand appeared in front of Hinata, and she blinked at it in confusion. "Wh-what-"

She instantly slapped a hand over her mouth to cut off the sound when she heard the sound of her own shaky voice being magnified back to her at close to three hundred percent from the speaker next to her. The embarrassed squeak that came after was also picked up and magnified, much to Hinata's chagrin.

Udon gave a chuckle disguised as a quiet cough. "Don't be scared of it, Hinata. It's not going to bite you."

"B-b-b-b-but-!"

Again, Hinata slapped her hand over her mouth when the microphone picked up her stutter and showed her just how terrified she sounded in all its glorious detail.

"Maybe it is turned up a little high," Moegi allowed. "You want to check it for me, Konohamaru? Or show Hinata how to do it, since she's going to be the one using it?"

"Sure thing." Konohamaru set his trumpet down and stood next to Hinata, grasping onto the microphone as he explained what to do to her. "So, what Moegi's going to do is mess around with the input level of the microphone in that amp over there in order to get the level right of balance between you and the band. All you need to do is this."

He leaned into the microphone until his mouth was almost brushing it, then he said at a normal volume, "Mic check." The words blasted out of the… amp? Was that what he called it? They blasted out of the amp at top volume, but Moegi cranked down a dial on the speaker so by the end of it, the sound wasn't splitting Hinata's ears. Konohamaru stepped back from the mic and turned to Hinata.

"Now you try. Say anything you like. Usually something simple like 'mic check' or 'testing' or just counting from one to three or something is the best."

Just the thought of voluntarily making her voice louder by electronic means was enough to make Hinata feel physically ill, but she gave a jerky nod. She'd said that she wanted this, so she had to see it through until the end. "O-okay."

Timidly, she leaned towards the microphone and whispered, "T-test-t…"

"You're going to have to get in closer and speak up, Hinata," Moegi called from where she was squatting next to the amp. "I'm not picking you up very well. Try just talking at your normal volume."

"Get this close." Konohamaru guided Hinata forward until she was uncomfortably close to the mic. "That will work better."

Now Hinata was so close to the microphone that she went cross eyed trying to focus on it. "B-but this is w-way t-too c-close-"

The mic picked up her protest and relayed it through the system, and to Hinata's surprise, the sound was no longer overpowering when it came out of the speaker. Moegi adjusted a dial and gave her a thumbs up.

"Perfect, Hinata! Just a couple more times and I think we'll be set."

She had to to that again?! More than once?! Hinata felt her hand shake so hard that if she was holding anything, she would have dropped it. Okay, okay, she could do this. She'd done it once before; what was a few more times, right? What was it that Konohamaru had told her to try saying?

"M-mic check…"

There, that came out better than the last time. She was getting better at this already. All she had to do was keep telling herself that. Moegi made a rolling motion with her hand as she stared down at the flashing lights and dials before her that confused Hinata for a moment, but then she realized that she was just asking her to keep talking.

"T-testing… testing… one… t-two… three… f-four…"

"And I think that's a pretty good level!" Moegi stood up and gave Hinata a thumbs up. "That should work!"

With a tiny nod, Hinata stepped back from the microphone, glad to escape from its grasp now that she was no longer required to stand so close to it. With a wave of his hand, Konohamaru brough the band back together.

"Everybody paying attention? Good; let's skip the into and start right at section A, alright peoples? Hinata, that just means you have less time to wait before coming in. I'll cue you, so don't worry."

Hinata's shy noise of assent was swallowed up by the chorus of "yep"s and "yeah, boss"s from the rest of the band. Konohamaru raised his hand and his trumpet and they quieted, and then he brought them in with a flick of his wrist.

Hinata recognized the section of the piece, and followed the flow of the melody in her mind to where she would start singing in a few bars. Cutting of that first thirty seconds of introduction wasn't going to throw her off; she could do this. She had already sung it once, so she could do it a second time.

Into the microphone.

She froze at the thought, her mouth already opening to sing. Before, the loudness of the orchestra had practically drowned her out, but now everyone would be able to hear every word she sang, every mistake she made. Her entrance came and went, but Hinata found herself unable to make any sounds come out of her throat. Konohamaru cast a concerned glance in her direction and lowered his trumpet to start mouthing the words for Hinata, but still she was unable to push the air needed to make her vocal cords vibrate through her lungs. After a few more seconds of this, Konohamaru waved his hands and the band grund to a halt.

"Are you okay, Hinata? Was that cue not good enough?"

"I c-c-can't't…" Hinata whispered, but unfortunately she was still standing next to the mic and it picked up everything she said and relayed it back at a louder volume. She shivvered and jerked away from the mic as if it had burned her. "I d-don't… n-not the m-mic…. It's t-too… t-too…"

Suddenly a voice from the back of the room broke through Hinata's frantic rambling. "Hinata, I understand that you're nervous, but we are a semi-professional organization. We have a gig tomorrow, so we need to rehearse, and we can't afford to let you waste our time. So either buck up and sing into the microphone or let us continue with our rehearsal, okay?"

Hinata shrank back into herself at the accustion from the woman at the keyboard she remembered kindly showing her to a seat the one time she'd gone to one of their gigs to watch Neji. It was just like she'd been telling herself all this time: she wasn't good enough, she was just a waste of time and space and no one would ever want to hear her sing or even talk or even think-

"Don't you think that's a a little harsh, Kurenai?"

Konohamaru came to Hinata's defense, stepping in between her and the woman who had spoken, but that didn't make Hinata feel any better. Actually, it just made her feel worse. Why couldn't she do anything right?

"I don't think so. We're not a charity organization; we're a business, and we can't afford to let someone mess around with our group if they're just going to waste our rehearsal time and they don't even plan on singing in a gig with us."

"I'll use the fucking microphone!"

For a second, Hinata wondered where the words had come from, then when everyone's gazes refocused on her instead of Kurenai and Konohamaru, she realized that she had said them. Her cheeks flushing a terrifying shade of red, she slapped a hand over her open mouth to prevent any other words from escaping, but the damage had already been done. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting to be told off, or worse, just being asked to leave in disgrace, but all she heard was a few seconds of silence before someone began to laugh loudly.

Opening one eye, Hinata saw that Udon had doubled over and was laughing so hard that he let go of the slide on his trombone and it slid out to its full length. After a few more seconds, a few more people joined in with a few chuckles, then the crest of the laugh peaked and Udon wiped his eyes.

"Jesus, I guess we know how to motivate Hinata now! That was brilliant!"

"I guess one more time wouldn't hurt," Kurenai acquiesced.

"Alright, one more time! From the same spot, everyone." Konohamaru turned to Hinata. "Are you ready this time?"

Hinata was only a little surprised when her words came out sounding confident. "Yes. Yes, I'm ready."

With a flick of his wrist, Konohamaru started the orchestra up again. This time, Hinata took a deliberate step closer to the microphone so she was almost kissing it, then inhaled a long draught of air and let it out slowly. The exhale tickled the microphone and caused a little feedback in the amp, but Hinata refused to let it bother her, and this time when her entrance came, she managed to sing it with a confidence that she was able to fake, even if she couldn't feel it.

Hinata was under no false impression that the song was perfect; she kept a catalog of every tiny mistake she made, a process that was only made easier by the way in which her voice was magnified by the microphone. Every consonant that got caught in her throat produced another wince as she struggled her way through to the end of the song, though she remembered Konohamaru's praise from the last time she had sung with just him, Udon, and Moegi and kept singing no matter what happened, even if she wasn't sure if she was singing the right notes.

She had to keep herself from heaving a sigh of relief when the last note shakily pushed itself out of her diaphragm and the orchestra continued on to the last chord. As they finished and lowered their instruments, Hinata again found herself the victim of a dozen and a half gazes regarding her contemplatively.

"She's better than Crystal was," remarked a man Hinata didn't remember the name of, distinguishable only by the saxophone he was playing. It was smaller than Moegi's, though Hinata couldn't have said the exact name of it.

Konohamaru's single trumpet companion shot to his feet. "Hey! Crystal was my girlfriend!"

"Yeah, _was_ being the operative word. Bitch was crazy." The first man rolled his eyes. "Crystal didn't have any high register. The new girl can actually hit those notes."

"Crystal was an alto!"

"No, Crystal was lazy and didn't know how to use her upper register. There's a difference."

"Let's not get too derailed here," Kurenai quickly interjected. "Hinata, that was lovely. Thank you for singing with us."

Hinata blinked. "Really?" The word sounded through the microphone, making her jump away from it, and she quickly retreated and tried again. "R-really? You r-really l-liked it?"

"Of course, it could use some work," the drummer Hinata vaguely recognized as being called Asuma observed, ricocheting a drumstick off a cymbal for emphasis. "But on the whole… pretty good."

"P-pretty good?" Hinata felt a sudden swell of pride; she hadn't expected anyone to actually like what she was doing.

"Yeah, I like it," Asuma replied. "Do you think she could do the gig with us tomorrow?"

Every good feeling Hinata felt bubbling in her stomach was immediately replaced by a wash of frozen acid that ate her guts out from the inside. It wasn't that she was even nauseous, her default state for nervousness; she was so far beyond auseous that she was surprised she hadn't passed out yet. Her mouth flopped open as if to answer him, but nothing came out except for the panicked sound of her breathing slowly increasing in tempo.

Konohamaru noticed her warning signs and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, Hinata, are you okay? What's going on?"

"You… y-you w-want m-me to s-s-s-s-s-s-s-"

She couldn't even get the final word out. The disconnect between her mouth and her brain stuttered and then snapped, leaving her speechless again. Her shoulder shook so hard that Konohamaru's hand would have slipped off its perch had he not gripped her shoulder.

"Why do you think we agreed to let you sing with us during this rehearsal?" Kurenai's voice was laced with a vague disappointed frustration. "Like I said, we don't have time to be wasting on people who don't want to make a commitment with us. Do you want in or not, Hinata?"

Did she? Now that Hinata stopped to think about it, she hadn't actually decided one way or another yet. She'd thought that this rehearsal would be no strings attached, but obviously that wasn't the case. She hadn't even thought as of singing as something she'd ever wanted to do, but now that she was doing it, she didn't want to stop. Yes, the idea was terrifying, but she felt more confident when the rehearsed notes and lyrics slipped out of her mouth than in anything else she did in her life, even her lessons with Neji.

Neji. That was another issue. What would he think of this situation?

"Hinata?"

Hinata looked up to see that everyone was still staring at her, waiting for a response that had never come. She resisted the urge to shrink even further into herself.

"Hinata, I asked you a question. Do you want in tomorrow or not? We can slip you in at the end no problem. The rest of us know this song, and you've already got it memorized. It can be our closer. What do you think? This is your last chance."

Did Hinata want to sing in a concert tomorrow? Absolutely not; she never wanted to sing in front of a group of people as long as she lived. Would she sing in a concert, despite her fears, if it meant that she got to keep singing with this group of musicians, and perhaps one day become brave enough to want to sing on her own?

Surprisingly, she found that the answer to that question was a hard maybe, even leaning towards a yes. She took a deep breath, curling her hands into fists at her sides. When was she going to stop relying on others to give her things and figure out how to get the things she wanted on her own? This was precisely why Neji didn't want to be around her any longer.

The thought of Neji was enough to galvinate her into action. "I'll do it."

Udon looked up sharply at her assertion. "Wait, Hinata, are you sure?"

"N-no," she admitted. "But I'd rather be uncertain and singing than uncertain and silent."

A brief moment of silence followed that statement, then Konohamaru gave a few slow claps. "Amen to that. Well, it sounds like that's been settled. Why don't we run a few of the stickly spots before we break, and then the rest of the rehearsal we can spend on our other music? How does that sound to everybody?"

"Are we missing anybody today?" Kurenai asked. "Section leaders? Anyone missing from your sections?"

Murmurs of dissent echoed from around the room, then Moegi suddenly announced, "Neji's not here."

Oh. Right. Hinata had almost forgotten for a moment that he played in this group, too. That could be a problem, considering that they still weren't talking to each other.

"He's been gone for so long that I almost forgot he's still a member." Udon whistled low under his breath. "Hinata, do you know when he's due back from his work thing?"

Hinata blinked. "Wh-what?"

"You know, that thing that he had to go out to New York for. When is he going to be back? Probably not in time for tomorrow, that's my guess."

"Act-tually…" Hinata cleared her throat uncertainty, her gaze locking with Konohamaru's knowing and a little angry one. "He's b-been b-back for almost f-five days n-now."

"Five days!" Moegi jumped out of her seat. "And he missed rehearsal today, _and_ he hasn't contacted us about the gig tomorrow? What kind of lead tenor is he?! I'm calling him right now!"

She struggled to extract her phone from her pocket, but Hinata jumped forward and grabbed her wrist in a panic. "No, don't!"

The look Moegi gave her clearly said that she was questioning Hinata's sanity. "Don't call my fellow section mate and chew him out for skipping rehearsal and a gig without a good reason? What are you, out of your mind?"

"Maybe Neji has a good reason for it," Konohamaru said evenly, and when Hinata looked up, his gaze was still boring into hers. She swallowed thickly and had to look away.

"Rejected. There is no reason important enough to make Neji stay away when he promised us he'd at least let us know when he got back!" Moegi pulled her phone out of Hinata's grasp. "I'm calling him, Hinata, and he's going to get the ass chewing of his life."

Under his breath, Udon muttered, "Please consider your phrasing, Moegi."

"Can it, Udon. You should be mad about this too!"

"Then- c-can you at l-least not tell him about m-me?" Hinata begged desperately.

Now Moegi lowered her phone and stared at her. "Not tell him what? That you sang with us today, that you're going to be performing with us tomorrow, how much you've been hanging out with us in the past few weeks, or what?"

"...All of it," Hinata clarified with pink cheeks. "S-sorry, M-Moegi, it's just… N-Neji and I are having a… hard t-time right now."

Her eyebrows crawled up her forehead. "What, the two of you in a spat or something?"

"S-something like that." This time, Hinata didn't need to look up to feel Konohamaru's gaze on her.

"Hey, I have an idea," Udon suddenly announced. "Why don't we surprise him? He doesn't know anything about what Hinata's been doing with us. What if we just called her out at the end of the concert and she sang with us and he didn't know who our vocalist was going to be until he saw her? That'd be so awesome!"

Moegi's eyes lit up. "That's a brilliant idea! I bet he'd be so proud!"

Hinata wouldn't exactly use the word proud, but she nodded. "P-please. He c-can't know that I'm there until I'm onstage." _Or he might try to stop me- or worse_.

"Damn, that's some spat," Kurenai remarked from the back of the band, shifting on her keyboard bench. "What happened between you two? It always seemed like he doted on you before."

Hinata only gave a helpless shrug. She could feel the unsatisfied and gossip hungry gazes of the rest of the band focusing on her face, but this was not something she was willing to compromise on. Her family matters was nobody's business but her family's… except now for Konohamaru, who was silent, but Hinata could feel his judging gaze on her back. Her shoulders hunched under the pressure of it.

"Fine, I won't tell him, but I am going to call him." Moegi held up her phone. "I'm putting him on speakerphone. Who want to hear me yell at Neji?"

* * *

The week passed by in a blurr for Neji, without any of the breaks in the monotony that would usually come in the form of a visit from either Hinata or Shikamaru. Instead, he threw himself into his work, reading reports with a structured vehemence and doing independent research when he had exhausted his supply of reports so he wouldn't have a moment to sit and get lost in his thoughts. His mind and body were more exhausted than he was comfortable with, but it was better than the alternative.

He'd been living in the silence for so long that the sound of his phone ringing physically jumped Neji. It was buried under a pile of things he'd printed out for his research, mostly old reports that he'd then gone over with a red pen and slashed apart, searching for connections and clues, and they crashed to the floor as he pushed them out of the way. He didn't care enough to pick them up, but just left them on the floor as he answered the call without looking at the caller ID, giving his practiced speech in a normal enough, if gravely from disuse, voice.

"Seattle File Operator Neji Hyuuga speaking. How can I help you?"

There was a beat of silence following his pronouncement. Neji frowned; usually the elders' proxy or anyone else who needed him wouldn't waste his time like that. Unless they were in trouble and an open line was the only way they could communicate without giving away their location, but in that case, they would call the Seattle hotline, not Neji himself.

It suddenly hit Neji that he hadn't answered his work phone, the landline that was only listed in the records of the Hyuuga family and impossible to call excpt by phones registered by the same. It was his cell phone, which he also received a lot of work calls on, but some of his personal contacts also had the number.

His fears were proven correct a few seconds later by Moegi's voice floating out of the phone. "What the hell kind of greeting is that, Neji?"

Shit. Neji winced. It was a good thing no one had been around to witness that, or he'd be in trouble for a breach of confidentiality. Just one more thing he could add to his tally. "Um… nothing, I was just expecting a work call. What do you want?"

"What do I want?" Moegi's voice was incredulous. "You're telling me you forgot? And here I thought you were just blowing us off!"

"Blowing you… Moegi, what are you talking about?"

This time, the voice that crackled out of the receiver was male. "Just a little something you promised that you'd make if you could, or tell us if you couldn't. Neji. Why aren't you here?"

Was that… Udon? Why was he with Moegi? Neji frowned. "Moegi, do you have me on speaker phone?"

"Oh, you bet I do, and everyone here's going to listen to you tell us why you're skipping the rehearsal for our big gig tomorrow when Hinata told us you've been back for practically a week!"

"Hinata said like five days, Moegi."

"Yeah, like I said! Practically a week!"

"Fucking hell…" Neji let his face drop into his hand, not even caring anymore about the swears that flew comfortably from his lips. "I'm so sorry, guys. It's just… it's been a stressful week for me, and it completely slipped my mind."

"That's not a good enough excuse," another voice snapped in the background. Damn, Neji thought, even Kurenai was in on this? "You have a responsibility to us and you said you'd be back by now. Just forgetting isn't a good enough excuse."

"I know, I just… I'm not in a very good position right now." If the exhaustion in Neji's voice didn't speak for itself in that aspect, nothing would. "I'll be at the gig tomorrow, I swear."

"You better damn well be," Moegi snapped. "We have important things to talk about."

"Yeah, you wouldn't believe the dirt Hinata's given us on you," Udon chimed in.

Neji's heart skipped a beat. This was now the second time they'd mentioned his younger cousin in a matter of minutes; that couldn't be a coincidence. "Is she… is Hinata there with you right now?"

There were a few murmurs and some shuffling as someone presumably shoved themselves to the front of the group, near the phone, and then Konohamaru's voice rang in Neji's ear. "No, she's not here. But she'd been spending a lot of time with us lately. You'd be surprised by how good of friends we've all become."

There was a strange coldness in Konohamaru's voice that Neji had never noticed before, and he frowned briefly before dismissing it as a trick of the phone with a shake of his head. "I'm glad. She… well, it wouldn't hurt her to be around someone other than our family all the time."

"So I've gathered."

Again, there was that coldness; Neji was sure of it this time. "Konohamaru, is there something bothering you?"

Konohamaru's breath hitched at the accusation. "Of- of course not! Moegi's going to yell at you some more now, bye!"

With that, he dropped the phone and Neji heard him beating a hasty retreat before Moegi picked it up again and spoke into the receiver.

"If you aren't at the gig tomorrow, I am personally going to find your boyfriend and show him off to everyone else here. Be warned. I won't take no for an answer this time."

Neji went cold, so cold that he swore that his fingers were locked around the phone, holding it to his ear, because the blood inside them was too sluggishly half-solid to make it back to his heart for rewarming- though his heart wasn't much warmer than the rest of him, and he doubted it could do the job anyway. "Moegi?" He asked, his voice growing stronger and sharper.

"What are you gonna do about it? Cry? Call me names again? The gay jokes will only get stronger the more you try to hide them, Neji," she taunted him, though Neji heard a hint of actual pain behind her voice when she refrenced the insult he'd called her in his fit of anger at the coffee shop… how long ago was that? It felt like years, not weeks.

He closed his eyes. "Don't you ever mention that to me again."

His words didn't include a threat like hers had, but somehow they carried more weight, and Neji could almost feel her shiver through the phone. She knew better than to ask for details in this public session, but Neji knew from experience that the next second the two of them were alone together, Moegi would grill him like a finely filleted salmon for that response. Neji didn't care; he wouldn't cave into her pestering. Not after what had happened last time.

"...Anyways," Udon's voice echoed down the line in a transparently bad attempt to change the subject. "Gig tomorrow. See you there. Threats of bodily harm and stuff if you don't. Love from all of us in the band. See you tomorrow!"

After a brief scuffle, the line went dead. For a long moment, Neji sat frozen at his desk, the phone at his ear now giving the tone that meant the other person had hung up and prompting him to disconnect as well. When he didn't, it did the computer equivalent of heaving a sigh of resignation at him and did it for him, disconnecting the call and returning itself to its natural state. Only after the screen had dimmed to black again did Neji let the phone fall down into his lap, but his fingers still refused to uncoil their grip on the case.

Hinata. Shikamaru. Hinata. Shikamaru. Hinata. Shikamaru.

He'd been successfully avoiding thinking about them the past few days, but the sudden call brought him back to reality with a harsh slap in the face. Shikamaru was gone from his life forever, and he was going to marry Hinata. Shikamaru was gone from his life forever… and he was going to marry Hinata.

Neji didn't realize that he was crying, the first time he'd allowed himself to since the day everything had crashed down around him, until the first drops fell from his face and splashed down onto the dark screen of his phone. He didn't bother to wipe them away; what did it matter anymore? They'd already won. Shikamaru was gone and Neji was never going to see him again, and Hinata… He was going to marry Hinata. He _wanted_ to marry Hinata. The Elders had won, because he wanted the power they were offering him.

So he wept.

* * *

Moegi looked down on the phone with a strange expression on her face. "What was that about?"

"I d-did t-tell you not to c-call him," Hinata said quietly.

"Yeah, but I thought…" Moegi trailed off, then shook her head. "He's never been that way to me, except-" She cut herself off.

"Except what?" Konohamaru hedged with furrowed brows.

"Nothing. I was running my mouth one day, and he finally got fed up." She shrugged, though Hinata's perceptive gaze could pick up the underlying currents of pain in her stance. "Don't push him anymore. I think he'd nearing the end of his rope."

"Wait a second." One of the saxophonists raised their arm. "Are you telling me that you got conformation one way or another on the gay bet? Come on, Moegi, spill! You know how much money I have riding on this!"

But Moegi shook her head. "Not happening, guys. Get yourself another lead, because that's not my story to tell."

"Hinata, then!"

Hinata jerked at the sound of her name and shrank back into herself as she suddenly found herself the center of unwelcome attention once again.

"You're Neji's cousin! You'd know better than any of us!" Most of the band shifted towards her as the saxophonist eagerly fixed greedy eyes on her. "Well? Is Neji gay or not? We've been teasing him mostly ironically but kind of unironically about it for years."

 _The door creaked open. Hinata saw Neji on the far side of the room, but could barely tell it was him; most of his body was blocked by a shadowy figure who stayed entirely too close to him. A ghost… a wraith. Neji's cheeks were flushed, his lips parted and red from extensive kissing, his hair mussed as if someone - some_ thing _\- had run its filthy unworthy hands through it and tore it apart. His eyes were glazed as they slowly shifted from the ghost in front of him to the open door and Hinata standing behind it, quickly becoming coherent, but not quickly enough to hide the fact that both his hands were clutching at the hips of the thing in front of him. He pushed it back to see her better, and Hinata caught sight of the imprint of teeth in his neck, angry and bruised. Clarity entered his vision and he opened his mouth to speak, but the thing pulled him back and planted a kiss directly on his lips, all the while keeping triumphant eye contact with Hinata as if to say_ , Look at me. Look at what I have, and you do not. This is mine now. _Neji succeeded in pushing the thing away from him fully by first punching it in the jaw and forcing it to unhand him, but it was already too late; Hinata had seen the way his entire body had instinctually melted into the kiss, giving itself over to the filthy unworthy ghost in a way that spoke of the ease of practice._

"He doesn't mean anything to Neji! Nothing!"

For a moment, Hinata didn't know where she was. The memory was so strong that she had to blink rapidly for several seconds before the practice studio and members of the orchestra who had asked her a question swam back into focus. Most, if not all, looked shocked at her anger. From behind her, a hand fell on her shoulder, and Hinata jumped before realizing that it was Konohamaru's. A quick glance at his face showed that it was stoney, and Hinata's stomach clenched at the sight.

"Why don't we stop poking into Neji's private life and get back to rehearsing?"

"That's rich, coming from you." The saxophonist snorted. "Aren't you usually one of the most insistent when it comes to making Neji crack?"

"We have a gig tomorrow," Konohamaru stubbornly resisted, not even blinking an eye at the attempt at a dig. "We should finish practicing if we want to add _Summertime_ as our closer."

"Fine." The saxophonist threw his hands into the air and moved back to his seat. Soon others followed suit, until everyone was back in their seats except for Hinata and Konohamaru.

He rested his hand in the small of Hinata's back and leaned down to whisper in her ear and everyone else got their instruments ready for another round of playing. "Are you okay to keep going?"

After she gave a resolute nod, Konohamaru kept going. Hinata took her place behind the microphone again, but this time, she felt slightly guilty. She didn't want to face Neji tomorrow.


	43. The Concert

Hinata didn't want anyone to know that the tightness in her stomach as a result of her extreme nerves had caused her to throw up two times already, so naturally, Konohamaru found out almost immediately. She was curled up on the bathroom floor, her hot face pressed against the cool tile of the floor, in the black gown Moegi had let her borrow, one she'd long since grown out of but still kept around for nostalgic reasons. Apparently Moegi had sung with her high school jazz ensemble and had worn it to a lot of concerts before she'd graduated, but after that she'd refused to sing at the professional level, only playing her tenor saxophone.

The bathroom was a single handicap accessible toilet rather than a row of stalls, which Hinata had chosen specifically because she wanted the privacy, but she soon figured out her error when she heard a knock at the door and Konohamaru's voice floated through the wood.

"Hey, Hinata? Are you okay in there?"

The handicap bathroom was gender neutral, whereas the long row of stalls in the women's restroom would not be.

"Hinata? Please answer me. Are you getting nervous?"

Getting nervous? Hinata had been a constant state of being terrified of launching into a panic attack at any second for the past thirty-six hours. She was so way past _getting nervous_ that it wasn't even funny.

The doorknob jiggled as Konohamaru tried to open it, but Hinata had locked it when she'd first entered the restroom so it wouldn't open. "Hinata? Are you dressed? Can you let me in?"

"No…" Hinata moaned against the tile. "G-go away…"

There was a pause before Konohamaru spoke again. "Hinata, are you sick? Are you to be able to sing today? Should I go get Neji-?"

"N-no!" The mention of her cousin galvanized Hinata off the floor, and she unlocked the door with shaking hands before dropping back down onto the floor, the movement of standing and walking even a few feet too much for her weak legs. She'd rather take Konohamaru over Neji at this exact point in time. "Th-the d-door's open. You can c-come in."

The door knob turned as Konohamaru pushed the door open, then he quickly shut it behind himself again when he saw her on the floor. "Hinata! Were you just sick in here? Do you need to go see a doctor? Do you have a fever?" He placed his palm against her forehead, despite Hinata's best efforts to avoid it. "You're a little warm, not bad. What's going on? Why didn't you tell anyone you weren't feeling well?"

"I'm f-fine," Hinata tried to tell him, but suddenly her stomach decided that the extra nerves from Konohamaru seeing her like this were too much for her system and she launched for the toilet again, barely making it in time before the first heave started.

She'd already thrown up twice so there was nothing left in her system but the few sips of water she'd managed to get down in an effort to calm the disgusting taste of bile in her mouth, but still her stomach insisted on emptying itself so she was left dry heaving desperately to purge her body of things that didn't exist. She choked on her inability to breathe as her lungs seized up during her dry heaves.

Hinata had thought that Konohamaru would back away, disgusted by her weakness, as soon as he saw her like this, but instead he came up behind her and kneeled down on the floor, carefully pulling her hair back away from her face. He ran his fingers through it soothingly despite how disgustingly sweaty Hinata knew it must be and even hummed a gentle little tune close to her ear until her body stopped shaking and she was able to lean back away from the toilet without the fear of having to dive for it again. Konohamaru gently pulled her back against his chest, and Hinata rested her head against his shoulder with her eyes closed as she struggled to slow her breathing and heart rate down to normal levels again.

"I'm s-so s-sorry you had to s-see that," she mumbled ashamedly, refusing to open her eyes because she was afraid to see the revision on his face.

To her surprise, Konohamaru just cradled her head against his shoulder and drew his hand through her hair soothingly. "Don't be. I just want you to be alright. Are you sick? Do you think you have the flu? Or food poisoning, maybe?"

"N-no…" At the mention of the legitimate reasons why she would be sick, Hinata turned her head so Konohamaru wouldn't be able to see the shame decorating her features. "It's… um… I'm n-not sick, just… n-nervous."

"Nervous?!" Konohamaru's grip tightened around Hinata's shoulders. "Hinata, if you were that bad, why did you tell anyone? We could have helped you! Or at the very least, not made you perform if you couldn't!"

"No!" Hinata shrugged away from the circle of Konohamaru's arms so she could look him in the eye. "I h-have to s-sing today! I h-have to show N-Neji that I can do it! I _have_ t-to!"

"Okay, okay…" Konohamaru held up his hands in surrender. "Then tell me how I can help you."

"Don't t-tell anyone else about this," she immediately responded.

He nodded. "Done. Anything else?"

There was one other thing that would help Hinata, something that Neji always did for her when she was scared like this, but she was afraid to ask it of Konohamaru, especially now that… their situation had changed. As if sensing the direction her thoughts were heading, Konohamaru placed a hand on her shoulder and looked her square in the eyes. "Anything, Hinata."

"C-can you… can you…" Hinata took a deep breath that steadies the shaking in her arms. "Would you m-mind just staying like this f-for a while?"

"Of course not." Instantly, Konohamaru's arms were wrapped back around Hinata, folding her into his chest. "Is that better?"

Into the stiff black material of his shirt, Hinata murmured, "Yes, th-thank you."

One of his hands rubbed soothingly down the material of her dress. Hinata felt a momentary flash of apology for dragging it around the bathroom floor, but she wasn't about to take it off in this situation. One of her hands splayed against Konohamaru's chest, her pinky finger pushing aside his tie.

Oh, right, the tie. She'd noticed that they all wore them, but in different colors. She should ask him a question about it, distract herself while her body tried to convince her thank hanging over the toilet for a fourth time was the best idea it'd had all month. Hinata tried to open her mouth to ask, but all that came out was a weak gasp.

Instantly his grasp tightened. "Are you okay? Going to throw up again?"

She shook her head against the material of the shirt, refusing to meet his eyes. "N-no, I was just th-thinking about your t-ties. Why d-do you all wear them, even the g-girls?"

"Oh, that." Konohamaru quickly caught on to what she was doing and started to ramble on while drawing strange, yet soothing shapes on her back. "It's an inside joke that goes back for years. Our concert attire is all black, you see, because it looks more professional when everybody's dressed the same on the stage, but we wanted to add a little bit of ourselves to it, so everyone got to pick own their own tie as a 'splash of color' to spice it up. At first our group was all guys so it didn't matter, and it's easy for guys to dress alike because basily all dress clothes for guys are just button down shirts and slacks, but it was harder to get the women to dress the same because even if you say 'your concert attire is a black dress' and tell them to go out and buy one, you're going to have five different people come back with five very different dresses. So eventually Moegi got sick of it and showed up wearing a tie, and it just kind of stuck. Of course, all the women in our group still have the option of either wearing a skirt or dress pants, but it looks better from the audience when everyone has a larger degree of uniformity."

"Then wh-why am I in this d-dress?" Hinata asked quietly.

"That's because you're both a vocalist and a soloist. It's tradition that they wear something to differentiate them from the band. It's like, you're a guest artist, so we want you to stick out."

Sticking out was not one of Hinata's favorite things to do. "So I d-don't get a t-tie?"

Konohamaru stiffened underneath her. "Shit, I didn't even think- Do you want one?"

Pulling back just far enough so that she could fix him with a weak smile, Hinata whispered, "M-maybe… maybe n-next time."

For a moment, Konohamaru just sat there staring at her, then his face split with a grin and he hugged her to his chest. "You are the most amazing person I know, Hinata."

She flushed. "I th-think you're a l-lot more amazing than m-me. I m-mean, l-look at what you do with this b-band."

"That's not true. I've been doing this for so long that it's easy for me now. You're the one facing your fears here." He stood up and pulled her to her feet. "Do you think you can come out now? I actually came to find you to tell you that our set was about to start."

Immediately the nerves that had been quieted by Konohamaru's presence started up again, but they weren't as bad as before. "Wh-where should I sit?" She asked with uncertainty, picking at the hem of her neckline. "B-backstage?"

She really didn't want to have to sit and wait all alone for the better part of an hour and a half long set for her song to ome at the end.

Her fears were slightly assuaged when Konohamaru said, "You can wait on the wings of the stage. I sit close to the edge so you can see me, and I'll look over at you every few minutes to make sure you're alright. How does that sound?"

It sounded better than huddling by herself in a corner of her own fear and misery for a hour and a half. But Hinata didn't want to admit that out loud, so she just said, "Th-thank you. That sounds p-perfect."

"Great!" He beamed at her. "I've got to go set my trumpet, but I'll send Moegi in to help you clean up in a few minutes, okay?"

Hinata didn't really want Moegi to see the mess she'd made of herself and the sins she'd commiting of rumpling her precious dress, but there wasn't another choice if she wanted to look presentable by the time she was supposed to sing. She nodded shakily and Konohamaru backed up to the door.

"I'll send her right in. You just focus on what you need to do, okay? We all believe in you. They wouldn't have wanted you to sing with us otherwise."

Then he was gone, and Hinata was left to stare at her bleak, disheveled expression in the mirror above the sink. Though she knew everything he had said was true, it was still hard for her to wrap her head around the fact that there were people out there who were stupid enough to trust a useless failure like her. Taking a deep breath, she shoved the hair off the sweaty nape of her neck and tried to school her expression into one that looked a little bit less like she'd just witnessed the murder of an entire busload full of orphans. If they were stupid enough to trust her that much, she was going to do her damndest not to let them down.

* * *

The gig seemed stilted to Neji. Maybe it was just his dark mood tainting everything he did, but he hated every little glint of glaring light that flashed off a bronzed instruments and into his eyes, hated the vibrations of the low pedal tones that came up through the soles of his shoes, hated the fact that his tie was pink _again_ , hated the loud crash of the cymbals on the drum set behind him, hated the crowd that applauded too loudly yet held an unappreciative air, hated the way his fingers were too slow on his the keys of his tenor, and most of all, he hated the strange and pitying looks he received from his bandmates.

When he hit an incorrect accidental with unprecedented violence for the third time in as many minutes, Neji forced himself to take a break and just finger along blandly without blowing any air into his instrument for several bars. This wasn't working; usually playing with the orchestra was his escape route, but today he was just too tense to concentrate on relaxing. He'd already turned down Moegi's offer of playing the Duel with the excuse of being out of practice. The only thing keeping him from walking off the stage after every song - or even in the middle, he didn't even care anymore - had been the carefully worded threats from his bandmates that he had better stay till the very end, or else. He didn't much care about what 'or else' entailed, but he'd still rather not piss of the only people who made him marginally happy on a semi-regular basis.

Moegi reshuffled the order of music on her and Neji's shared stand in between songs, and Neji caught a glimpse of a piece of music he knew he hadn't lined up for their order, because they hadn't played it in years and the only arrangement they had was for a vocal soloist and backup band, and they didn't currently have a vocalist. With a delicate frown maring his features - the most emotion he'd showed the entire night thus far - he leaned in to speak to her in a low voice.

"Why is Summertime in the order?"

She shrugged, the gesture deliberately too casual to his eyes. "We decided to put it in the order yesterday, you know, at the rehearsal you decided to skip. It's not a problem, is it? You've played it before."

"That's not why I was asking. Who's soloing? Did Konohamaru finally rewrite the vocal score into a trumpet solo like he's been threatening for years?"

"No, we have a vocalist."

Asuma counted them in for the next song then so the conversation was cut off before Neji could ask what Moegi meant by that, but the question still nagged at him. Is that why they'd been so upset that he'd missed the rehearsal yesterday, because thy'd found a new vocalist? Or was it more along the lines Moegi had cited, of him not telling them that he was back like he'd promised to do, then promptly forgot because of the confusing shit that went down in between the promise and the botched execution of the promise. And who was the new vocalist?

When the song ended, Neji took it upon himself to fix the music for the next song, and in doing so, leaned closer to Moegi so he could ask her. "Who's the vocalist?"

She threw him an irritated glance. "Shh- no talking during the set. Professional, remember?"

As if she hadn't been doing it earlier too. Still, Neji didn't push the issue and just shuffled the music just in time to replace his tenor reed back in his mouth before Asuma counted them in for the next song. It was only a few more songs until their set was done, so Neji only would have to wait through this song and one other before Summertime came up in the order and he would see for himself who the soloist was. He'd always been a patient man; he could wait that long.

* * *

The wing of the stage consisted of a curtain that hung down over the side entrance they entire band had dragged their instruments and various electronic equipment through before the concert had started. Hinata had carefully entered and sat down in a chair that had been left there for her during the applause after the first song so no one would notice the sound of the door opening and closing behind her. It was the first time she'd been in an area like this, and it was fascinating, the amount of absolute junk that was piled everywhere, none of which she could make heads or tails of. Was that one of the giant lights that beamed down on the stage? Was it broken or an extra? And were those… set pieces from a play? What kind of play required a house made entirely from cardboard boxes painted to look like cheese?

Konohamaru winked at her when she sat down, and she gave him a tiny wave in response. From her carefully placed perch, she could see about half of the band but none of the audience, something which she was grateful for. She didn't want to make herself more nervous than she needed to be before she even stepped on stage. From this angle she could also just make out the back of Neji's head, which meant that he wouldn't be able to see her unless he turned and craned his neck backwards at an awkward angle, and even then, Konohamaru had assured her, the lights on the stage were so bright that he wouldn't be able to make out her form with any degree of accuracy sitting in the dark.

Hinata was grateful that everyone else in the band seemed to be as invested in surprising Neji as she was, because she was positive that it wouldn't have worked without their cooperation. Thus far, no one had managed to forget and let slip that Summertime was even on the program for that night, let alone that she was singing it. She couldn't wait to see the look on his face when he saw her walk out there, as calm as could be, and proved to him that she didn't need his pity and his coddling anymore.

Now she only had to pull it off.

In the darkness behind the curtain, Hinata shivered. Konohamaru caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and sent her a reassuring smile that was laced with uncertainty, seeming to ask, _are you okay?_ She responded in kind, an ambiguous shrug that could mean that she was either fine or considering going back to the bathroom to puke her by now nonexistent guts out for the fourth time that night. The frown in his eyes deepened and he leaned a little closer to her, mouthing a question that Hinata didn't understand. At her questioning look, he placed a hand on her stomach and gave her a questioning look.

Ah. He was asking if she felt sick again. Hinata wondered if it showed on her face, maybe making her paler than she normally was. She shook her head, considering that her stomach wasn't currently protesting past normal bounds. It might be getting there, though.

The concerned look on his face quickly melted to one of panic when the trumpet player next to Konohamaru picked up his instrument and started to play with an annoyed glance at his partner. He fumbled to get his trumpet up in time and ended up coming in a few seconds late, his fingers slipping of his eyes and his mouthpiece crashing into his teeth with a painful sounding clack. Despite herself, Hinata giggled just loudly for him to hear, and Konohamaru's eyes widened as he glanced briefly to the side to see her tiny smile. Maybe it was selfish of her, but watching someone else make a mistake and carry on made her more confident in her own ability to continue, no matter what happened.

The tight feeling in her stomach diminished somewhat as she focused on the music instead of her churning gut and mind. Jazz was a much more ragged form of music than she was used to, but somehow the strange rhythms became comforting to her over the course of the night. A few of the pieces she even found herself nodding along to and humming a few bars of the repeated melodies that she'd come to recognize by the end of a song. In fact, she'd almost forgotten about her solo entirely until Konohamaru shuffled his music, and she saw that they only had one more piece to go before Summertime was up.

Instantly her stomach hardened into a lead weight again, and Hinata had to resist her body's instinctual urge to purge it from her system. She barely heard the next song, so absorbed in her own fear was she. In fact, she only noticed it was over when the shiny bell of Konohamaru's trumpet fell back down to his side and he gave her a look that said it was time.

Someone, probably Kurenai, was announcing the last song of the set, and there were disappointed groans from an enthusiastic audience. She undercut it with a speech about something special though, but Hinata didn't know what it was. Something about the last song they were going to play.

Oh. It was her. She was going to sing. That was what was special about it. She'd almost forgotten.

Hinata tried to stand, but her knees shook too hand and she crashed back down into the chair she had been sitting in. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Konohamaru make some kind of motion to Kurenai and then set his trumpet down on a little spider-legged stand next to his music stand and dart behind to curtain to stand next to her.

"Are you okay, Hinata?"

 _Does it look like I'm okay_? Hinata wanted to scream at him, but no sounds were coming out of her mouth. Her breath came faster and faster, until she couldn't feel her fingers or the tip of her nose from hyperventilating. He tried to help her stand, but her knees buckled and she ended up just leaning on him for support as her body prepared itself for a panic attack.

No! She couldn't have a panic attack now! Not after everything she'd done, all the work she'd put in and the faith everybody had in her to succeed! She struggled against the threat of the attack, but it was like trying to stem the rising tide of an oceanic body, the waves lapping closer and closer to her throat with each and every thunderous beat of her heart.

Dimly, Hinata heard Kurenai start to improvise a speech about the song they were going to play on the fly, telling a little bit about the show it was from and the composer who wrote it, but she couldn't tell exactly what she was saying. Her breath came in hard pants that grazed the side of Konohamaru's neck as her fingers clutched at the front of his shirt, wrinkling the pressed material and dislodging the tie clip that kept his orange tie from flopping around when he played. His arms were strong as they held her up, but his voice was harsh in her ear.

"Hinata, you need to stand now. It's time for you to sing."

"B-but I'll n-never be able t-to d-do it," she whispered. "I'm use… useless. I c-can't s-sing if I c-can't even t-talk!"

"That is not true." Konohamaru forced Hinata to let go of him and pushed her back so he could take her face in both of his hands and stare directly into her eyes. "You sing beautifully. I love to hear you sing. So forget about everyone else out there and just sing for me, like you did that first time. Can you do that?"

Hinata's breath caught. After throwing a brief glance over his shoulder to make sure no one was observing them, Konohamaru leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss to her cheek, just close enough to the corner of her mouth that if she'd turned her head even just the slightest bit, it would have ended up on her lips instead.

Against her skin, Konohamaru murmured, "I'm sorry, but this was the only thing I could think of. Besides, friends can kiss each other on the cheek, can't they?"

The last part was said more to him than to Hinata, but it still warmed her heart. What had she ever done to deserve someone as wonderful as Konohamaru?

Nodding, she stepped back and broke contact with him. "I'm sorry, t-too. I'm ready now."

"Good." He turned around quickly and made some kind of sign to Kurenai before turning back for one more brief second to squeeze Hinata's hand, then he jumped back out from behind the curtain to retake his seat.

From beyond the curtain, Hinata heard Kurenai breathe a sigh of relief before announcing, "And now, I am pleased to introduce our guest vocalist for today, Hinata Hyuuga, here to perform George Gershwin's _Summertime_."

Hinata stepped out from behind the curtain and took a step towards the front of the stage. The silvery threads sewn into the dress caught the light the same way as the instruments of the band members and threw them off in an array of colors. In a twist that came as surprising to her, the lights focused on the stange were so bright that it was difficult for her to make out anyone in the audience. It was just like Konohamaru had said; she wasn't singing for them, she was just singing for the people on the stage, the people who trusted her.

Her eyes were unfocused, drifting over the band until she found the person she was looking for. Her gaze locked with Neji's stunned and slightly furious one, and she smiled at him as she walked to where Kurenai was standing behind the microphone she was to use. The woman gave her a clap on the small of the back invisible to the audience and muttered in Hinata's ear, "Took you long enough. Give 'em hell, huh, Tiger?"

Then she retook her seat on the piano bench and the music started behind Hinata. It flowed around her like the wave of a tropical tide, soothing instead of overwhelming, and again she smiled. She could do this.

* * *

When he heard his cousin's name announced into the room and saw Hinata emerge from behind the curtain, Neji couldn't decide whether he was proud, afraid for her, or pissed beyond belief that the entire band had gone behind his back to orchestrate this fiasco. Hinata wasn't going to be able to do this! She could barely hold a conversation with someone she didn't know for longer than five seconds, let alone sing in front of a room full of strangers for a full five minutes! He knew her signs of discomfort and nervousness well by now, and right now she was exhibited all of them, the sweat pooling in the hollow of her bare collarbone and along the nape of her neck, her usual blush replaced by an unhealthy pallor, the way she walked with stiff knees because she was afraid they would buckle and send her to the floor if she trusted them too much, and her wandering eyes, unable to focus on one thing for too long. How dare they push her to do this when she was so scared that she couldn't see straight?

And then Hinata's gaze found Neji's with a vivid clarity, and she smiled at him before continuing on to the the front of the stage, and his heart stopped.

In all his life, Neji had never known Hinata to smile like that.

She took her place in front of the microphone in the front of the orchestra, but since Neji was on the opposite side of the stage as her he could see a sliver of her face in profile. She was deathly afraid, he could tell by the way her hands were shaking and how she clutched at the fabric of her dress to hide the motion of their trembling. But she was also smiling, and she kept smiling as the orchestra started playing at a cue from Konohamaru that Neji completely missed. Moegi started playing, jerking Neji out of his stunned stupor, and he yanked his instrument up to his mouth to come in a few bars late. The whole time he was playing, though, he kept his eyes locked on Hinata, barely glancing down at his own music.

How could she smile like that when she was so afraid?

* * *

Hinata didn't know if the smile on her face was convincing anyone else that she was fine, but it was doing a pretty good job duping her own emotions into thinking she was safe and sound in her own room, performing for her own reflection in the mirror instead of to a crowded auditorium. The darkness of the crowd certainly helped with that fantasy, as well as the fact that they were relatively quiet to hear the slower, more subtle rhythms of the ballad she was singing, verses the loud whoops they'd let out at the hearty swing tune the band had played the number before. As her introduction wound down to a close she leaned into the microphone - she was still afraid of it, but it suddenly seemed a lot less terrifying now that she had a reason for wanting someone to hear her - and just smiled.

" _Summertime, and the livin' is easy…"_

Gershwin's words slipped from her throat as easily as she'd rehearsed them with nobody watching. Yesterday evening after the rehearsal had broken up, Moegi had volunteered to stay after and help Hinata with some vocal techniques to polish up the piece. Having experience as a jazz singer, she was able to teach Hinata a few simple things that changed the piece from a copy of the one she had been listening to on repeat for the past week to one that was entirely her own. Hinata hadn't even known that her voice could do some of the things Moegi had taught her, and while she couldn't use them all effectively yet, she had mastered two or three over the course of the lesson that she could use to turn the song into a game between herself and the band, pushing and pulling the volume and length of her words and seeing how it interacted with their sound.

" _So, hush, little baby, don't you cry,"_ she finished off the first verse with a glance over her shoulder at Neji. He was still staring at her with an expression that was now more mixed between anger and proud confusion. A sudden burst of inspiration hit Hinata, and she grabbed the mic from the stand and held it as she sung the next line, raising her other hand into the air.

" _One of these days, you're gonna rise up singing…_ "

Someone in the audience let out a whoop at the move, and the sound jarred Hinata back to the reality of the audience before. She stumbled over the next line, glancing back behind her in a mounting panic when she felt like she had gotten off from where the music was playing.

" _And you'll s-spread your wings… and… mmm-hmm… sky…"_

Suddenly, the sound of a trumpet playing the melody Hinata was supposed to be singing came out from behind her, bolstering her courage and helping her find her place again. She didn't need to turn around to know that it was Konohamaru.

She finished the verse off strong, then started it again. In this song, there were only two verses, but they were each repeated twice to make a pattern of four. The lyrics for the first verse were sung, then then second, and then the second again before finishing off the the same words the song had started with. This time, the words came out clearer, and she wasn't thrown off when the audience let out a noise of appreciation at a little growl she threw in on instinct.

" _One of these mornings you're gonna rise up singing_

 _And you'll spread your wings and you'll take to the sky_

 _But till that morning, there ain't nothin' can harm you_

 _With daddy and mammy standin' by…"_

Hinata suddenly felt a kinship with the words that she'd never felt before. It was true; today, she was going to rise up singing. She'd been standing aside for too long allowing the "daddy and mammy"s of her life to protect her, but now was the time for her to fly.

" _So, hush, little baby, don't you cry."_

As her words ended, she felt a beat of exhaustion thrum through her chest. She had done it! As the orchestra wound down into the conclusion, she couldn't keep the stupidest grin from splitting her face. Yes!

The audience broke into thunderous applause at the end of the song, and Hinata was stunned by the wall of sound it made rushing towards her. Sending a brief panicked glance at Kurenai, she replaced the microphone in the stand and stepped back from it. The woman stood up next to her and motioned for the rest of the band that was sitting to follow, then raised her hand where the rest of the group to see it and leaned forward in a bow that everyone else copied. Hinata hastily followed them a few seconds late, only realizing that she was holding it for too long when they all bowed a second time and she was still leaning forward. This time she came up with the rest of the group, feeling the whoops of the excited instrumentalists behind her dissolve whatever embarrassment remained from her mistake.

After a few more bows and the applause from the audience had died away to a manageable level, the people around Hinata broke formation to collect their equipment and move their instruments back behind the stage, into the place called the "green room" where they'd left the stiff cases they used to protect their instruments until it was just her and Kurenai left on the stage with the person who had hooked up their speakers to the electrical system earlier. The stage lights switched off and the lights on the floor came up to give Hinata her first look at the audience she'd just sang to. Her jaw dropped when she saw how many people there was. There had to be at least a hundred.

"Th-there's so m-many people!"

Kurenai laughed and patted her head. "This is a relatively small gig, actually. We've played for much bigger groups."

Unable to contain her amazement, Hinata turned to her with a dropped jaw. The smile the pianist bestowed upon her was kindly. "You had a couple rocky moments there, kid, but you pulled through. Good job. We'd welcome you back to sing for us anytime."

Hinata swelled under the praise, then gasped as a bolt of sudden terror hit her. "Wait, you m-mean I have t-to do that-t _again_?!"

Again, Kurenai laughed. "Only if you want to. But I'm sure everyone would love to have you back. In fact, why don't you go find them? I'm sure your friends are dying to congratulate you."

"B-but…" Hinata looked at the mic. "Shouldn't I t-take care of this?"

"I've got it. I always use the provided piano, so I usually get the cords and stuff because I don't have to carry around an instrument." To prove her point, Kurenai unplugged the mic Hinata had been using and and started coiling up the cord. "Go on, shoo."

Hinata didn't need to be told a third time. She darted through the backstage door on the side stage and followed the sounds of excited shouting to the green room. Once outside the door, she paused, but only for a second before she pushed the door open and entered into the room.

"OH MY GOD HINATA THAT WAS FANTASTIC!"

Before Hinata knew what was happening, Moegi had launched herself at Hinata and knocked her back against the door in a flying tackle hug amidst the cheers from the rest of the orchestra. Udon pulled the red-haired limpet off of Hinata's limbs with a shake of his head and a long-suffering eye roll, but embraced her as well once Moegi was out of the way.

"That was really awesome, Hinata. You did amazing."

"Th-thank you," she squeaked, looking up to meet Konohamaru's gaze from across the room as he put his trumpet away. He snapped the case closed with a definitive flick of his wrist, then marched across the room to sweep her up in the biggest hug yet, holding her close to his chest and rocking her back and forth as he whispered in her ear.

"That was beautiful. I couldn't take my eyes off of you."

Hinata hummed delicately in response.

"I'm serious. I loved it."

After she regained the ability to breathe again, she said back to him, "Th-thank you. And thank you f-for… you know… what you d-did earlier, and the save…"

"Don't mention it. That's what we're all here for, isn't it? To make each other sound better as a whole than any one of us would sound alone."

Tears pooled in Hinata's eyes that she had to blink rapidly away, but before she could speak again, Moegi jumped back into the frey.

"Hey, quit hogging Hinata! I haven't gotten enough of telling her how awesome she did yet!"

But Konohamaru refused to relinquish her, so Hinata ended up in the middle of both of them. When Udon gave up trying to break them apart and simply joined the group hug as well, she had to laugh, the sound rising above the din like a fairy in flight.

"Hinata."

The arms surrounding Hinata loosened as all three of them stepped away from her, leaving her with a clear view of Neji from across the room. His face no longer held any anger, but a mixture of pride and acceptance.

"Can I… talk to you?"

Hinata flinched, but stood her ground. "S-sure."

His eyes flickered around the room at their now spellbound audience. "I meant in private."

Hinata's heart rate hitched up a notch. "D-does it have to b-be?"

Neji's tone left no room for argument. "Yes."

After a brief shiver, Hinata nodded and turned to leave the room again, knowing that Neji would follow her. She went back to a long hallway far away from the room where everyone else was and stood in the center of it, where it would be impossible for someone to follow them and stand behind a corner close enough to hear anything of value. She waited with her back turned to Neji as he walked up behind her.

"You sang wonderfully tonight."

Hinata's heard jerked up and she turned around to see her cousin standing behind her with an open expression of broken warmth, the weakest she'd ever seen him. It seemed paradoxical now, that she was the one who was strong.

"I never thought…" He started, then trailed off. "I want to apologize. When I first saw you step onto that stage, all I could think was how inconsolable you'd be after you failed. I never even considered that you might succeed, and succeed as well as you did. I did exactly what I swore I'd never do; I undervalued your worth, and I'm sorry for that."

Hinata couldn't lie; the words stung. But she only nodded her head. "Thank you."

She could tell Neji understood the implications of the thanks rather than an "I forgive you," and it drew a look of pain to his features.

"Hinata, I want you to know that I always did what I thought was the right thing. I never tried to hurt you."

"I know." She took a deep breath. "But you did."

"I know." He closed his eyes briefly. "How can I get you to forgive me? What can I do to make this better?"

"Nothing. You c-can't."

Neji winced, but Hinata kept talking.

"I s-saw you with that _thing_ , N-Neji. You b-broke our laws. There's n-nothing you can do to f-fix that."

"I know." The expression on Neji's face turned self-deprecating. "But there's nothing I can do to fix that. Even if I could go back and change things, I wouldn't. Because… because I… I love him."

Hinata spun around and covered her mouth to hold back her choked sob, but she knew Neji would hear it anyway. He always had. The betrayal ripped through her, leaving behind a gaping hole in its wake, before she realized something.

They were similar, in a way.

"Konohamaru kissed me," she announced while keeping her back to her cousin. "I told him the truth about being engaged, but… I didn't want to turn him down."

For a moment, Neji was silent, then he laughed without any humor in his voice. "I guess we were more alike than I thought." Hinata heard him lean back against the wall and let out a world-weary sigh. "So, now what happens? Do you want to fight the engagement? Just when-" He cut himself off before he could finish the sentence.

Hinata shook her head, still keeping her back to Neji. "No. We go through with the marriage."

Neji jerked away from the wall. "Why? You have a reason to refuse now!"

"Not a good enough one." Hinata fisted her hands tightly in the material of her borrowed dress, then slowly let it go. Her fingers left rough indents in the stiff fabric. "We were raised to do the duty of our clan, Neji. Did you forget that somewhere along the way with your pet wraith?"

"Maybe times have changed. Maybe we shouldn't have to. Maybe it's time our family evolved."

"For what?" Hinata whirled around to face him. "Our family has been like this for generations; what makes you think that you're special one who can change it?"

"Because I'm willing to try!"

"Trying is pointless! It will never amount to anything!" Hinata shook her head. "I don't to change this. If I can't marry someone I want to marry, I'd rather marry someone I don't not want to marry than someone I don't want to marry."

"But why settle when there's a chance that you could find someone you want to spend the rest of your life with?" Neji argued back.

"What, like your _wraith_?" She spat back, enjoying how much the words caused Neji's eyes to bleed in the same vicious joy she'd see in his face when he'd made her cry the day she'd learned about their engagement. "You know why you're so wrong about this? I'll tell you why: it's because you spend too much time with these people! They've warped your mind so you think like them! We are not like them, Neji, we are Special and they are Other! How could you have forgotten?"

For a moment, Neji looked like Hinata had slapped him, then his eyes darkened. "Don't you dare speak that way about them, not after what they've done for you! You think I haven't noticed how little you've stuttered since this conversation started?"

"But I at least can keep us separate in my mind! I turned Konohamaru down!"

Neji sagged like a puppet whose strings had been unceremoniously cut. "Maybe you're right. Maybe this is all been one big game I've been playing, with the odds stack so high against me that they only let me keep playing to see how far I would take it. But Hinata, I swear to you that everything I've don't up to this point, I've done for your sake."

"I don't need to be protected by you! I'm not a child anymore!" Anger flared inside Hinata, sudden and hot, and she took a deep breath to tell the first malicious lie she'd ever spoken. "I hate you. You need to stop pretending like you're my big brother, because you aren't. You never were."

This time, it was Neji who turned away so Hinata couldn't see his face. "If that's the way this is going to be, so be it," he bit out savagely, straightening his back so she couldn't see the pain in he features, though she could hear it in his voice. "I'm glad we got that sorted out. The Council of Elders are officially announcing our engagement in two days, Hinata. I'll see you there."

With that he stalked down the hallway, leaving Hinata behind with a broken and angry heart, trying desperately to think of what she could do to prove herself to Neji before the two days were up.

* * *

Neji marched back to the room the rest of the group was waiting in with an expression like thunder on his face, violent and heavy. He looked to Udon like a man on a mission not to be trifled with. He ignored the varied calls of his name mixed in with questions and some obnoxious remarks to instead shout over the steady din.

"KONOHAMARU!"

Konohamaru's face popped up from behind his trumpet case. "What's up, Neji? Hey, where's Hina-"

He never got to finish his question. Neji punched him in the face, knocking him backwards on the floor with a shocked expression. Within a second Neji had followed him down to the floor and seized his tie, lifting his head from the floor and choking him with it as he seethed into his face.

"Don't you ever touch my cousin again."

He threw Konohamaru back down on the floor and stormed out of the room without pausing to even look at anything else. After a few seconds of shocked silence during which Udon could only stare at the scene and gape, Konohamaru pushed his upper body off the floor with a wince, and the frozen crowd thawed as Moegi reached down to help him the rest of the way to his feet. Murmurs of confusion erupted around the room, but they quickly quieted as Hinata pushed open the door Neji had just stormed out of, wearing her normal clothes again and holding the dress Moegi had leant her.

It was obvious that she'd been crying. Wordlessly, she bowed her head and shoved the dress in Moegi's direction.

"What happened out there, Hinata?" Moegi asked with a worried expression as she took the dress from Hinata's grasp. "Why is Neji so angry?"

Hinata just flinched and shook her head. "Th-thank you f-for l-letting me b-borrow the d-dress."

"Hinata, you didn't answer my question. He just marched in here and punched Konohamaru out of the blue- what is going on between you two?"

At the mention of Konohamaru, Hinata's face finally shot up, and a look of guilt crossed it when she saw him cradling his jaw. "I- I'm s-sorry. He shouldn't have d-done that."

"Hinata…" Konohamaru started towards Hinata with a raised hand, but she flinched away from him. With a frown, he dropped his outstretched hand. "Was that about…?"

He left the question open ended, and Hinata's eyes sharpened at the implication they both clearly understood, but Udon did not. "That's none of your business."

The words caused Konohamaru to draw back on himself like they were made of lead instead of sound. As Udon watched, Hinata drew herself up to address the room at large.

"I want to th-thank you all f-for everything you did for me tonight. Singing with you was… absolutely amazing." A small smile crossed her lips, but only fleetingly. "And I appreciate Kurenai's offer to c-come back, but I think… I th-think I c-can't sing with this group as l-long as N-Neji is still here. Thank you… but g-goodbye."

Then she turned on her heel and ran, leaving behind a silently shocked room much as her cousin had before.

Konohamaru was the first to recover, and when he did, he let his folder of music drop to the floor. The sound ricocheting through the stillness like a bullet, snapping others out of their ferver. He left it there for a few seconds, then he kicked it across the room with a scream of rage. Papers flew everywhere as it exploded under his foot. Everyone else in the room looked away in the face of his anger, but Udon just leaned down and picked up the sheets of music that had fallen next to him.

"Come on, buddy, don't be like that. You know that wasn't directed at you."

"Oh, yeah, as if the physical assault from her fucking cousin wasn't enough evidence to the contrary," Konohamaru snapped sarcastically, running his hand through his hair and gripping it so hard he almost tore it out of his scalp. His jaw was already starting to swell and turn an unseamly color.

"It's not that simple." Moegi also started to help him pick up his music, then turned around snapped at the rest of the group, "Quit gawking and get outta here! This ain't a soap opera."

With various mutters of suspicious confusion, the rest of the band filed out of the room with their instrument cases, leaving just Konohamaru, Moegi, and Udon to finish picking up the scattered sheet music in silence.


	44. First Blood Trial

Hey guys! I'm sure you'll be glad to know that we're now back to our main couple!

Of course, we all know that Shikamaru has a plan. Does anybody have a guess to what it is? You'll find out next chapter!

* * *

Several days later in the antichamber before the Council courtroom, Neji was sure that his heart was beating so hard that Hinata, standing next to him, should be able to hear it loud and embarrassingly clea. In fact, when the doors would open and let into the courtroon itself, it would be able to hear his terror magnified in his heartbeat.

He cast a quick glance at Hinata, and found that she was staring straight ahead, her spine ridged. His breath caught looking at her as her words from the concert two days ago rang in his mind.

" _I hate you. You need to stop pretending like you're my big brother, because you aren't. You never were."_

When, he wondered, had Hinata gotten so cold?

The door in front of them cracked open to show the upper body of the doorman. "The Council is ready to see you now."

"Thank you." Neji inclined his head and took a step forward to go through the door first, but Hinata pushed past him and stalked through the open door before he could. A flash of irritation scorched the inside of his chest, but he quickly tamped it down again. He had bigger things to worry about than Hinata's poor attitude. As she had so explicitly said to him, she didn't need him anymore.

Bigger things to worry about like the fact that, he realized once he entered the Council chamber, there were far more people in the room then there should have been, especially for a single betrothal agreement. What was going on? What had he missed when he'd isolated himself in his own corner of work for almost a week?

The Elder stood and spread his arms welcomingly as the door boomed shut behind them. "Hinata, Neji; welcome! So good to see you again!"

As one, Neji and Hinata bowed and spoke. "Thank you, Lord Hyuuga."

"Please, please," the Elder said with an indulgent smile. "There's no need to be so formal, you two."

 _So that's how this was going to go._

This was a dance of informal formality that Neji had gone through with his grandfather time and time again, and it was starting to get old. Still, what would happen if he chose not to would be worse than the irritation bustling in Neji's chest at the game itself. Quickly stepping forward, he bowed his head.

"Yes, Grandfather."

As he fell back a step, Neji saw Hinata follow his lead and incline her head. "Y-yes… yes, G-Grandfather."

By the way his gaze hardened as he looked at her, Neji could tell that the Elder wasn't pleased with her stutter, but he didn't call attention to it as Neji thought he might. Instead, he sat back down and gestured to the general assembly.

"We have gathered here today for two reasons."

Neji interest spiked; so he was right, there was a reason besides the betrothal announcement why they were there. But what?

"The first, I am pleased to announce, is a very happy occasion. Merriam, if you would do the honors."

When the grey-haired old woman in charge of marriage arrangements stood, a buzz of suspicious chatter echoed around the chamber, and the announcement was already as good as made. It must still be presented officially, however, and she clears her throat to demand silence, then speaks into the now still hall.

"We at the Department of Marriage and Counseling of the Council of Elders are pleased to announce the fruition of a relationship we have been cultivating for the better part of a decade. The two young adults you see before you, Hinata and Neji Hyuuga, both of the Lord Hyuuga's line of descendents, have been promised to each other upon the intention that they will be married after Hinata's eighteenth birthday. Now that this betrothal has been announced in a formal capacity, it is binding and cannot be broken according to our family law."

Neji felt the last sentence of her statement - not one usually included in an announcement like that - like a weapon aimed in his direction. But with all the fuss he'd kicked up about the betrothal over the years, he supposed he deserved it.

A round of dutiful applause shattered the silence of the room after the announcement, but it felt more oppressive than congratulatory to Neji. Not because he'd finally lost the battle he'd been fighting for years, but because he wasn't sure if he'd lost the will to fight in the face of what he stood to gain, and it was that uncertainty which was killing him.

Merriam sat back down, and the Elder recognized her with a nod of his head. "Thank you, Merriam. Now we move on to the second reason we have assembled here today. Neji, you may take a seat over there."

Neji was jerked from his thoughts by the sound of his name, and he looked up to see his grandfather pointing in the section where the non-Council meeting attendees were sitting. Though he knew better than to argue, questions bounced around the inside of his head as he walked to indicated section and sat down in an empty chair next to a distant cousin that he vaguely recognized. What was going on? What could he so important that this many people had gathered to watch it?

And why was Hinata still standing in the center of the room, instead of him?

Neji's questions were answered soon enough. The Elder raised a hand to quiet the contemplative buzz that had arisen after his announcement.

"There are many ceremonies in the life of a young Hyuuga, but none so important is the First Blood Trial. Hinata here has been kept from this ceremony by her tutor after an unfortunate incident years ago, but now Hinata herself has come forward and requested a second chance at the trial."

All the blood in Neji's veins turned to ice. He was the tutor spoken so disparagingly of, but for good reasons; even discounting Hinata's inability to control the Byakugan unassisted, she wasn't mentally ready for this! The First Blood Trial was the last requirement before someone applied for a field job or a partnership with an Uchiha, and involved ending - by hand, with a silver blade, and in front of a large audience - a captured ghost who had refused to fade naturally to prove that the results could be replicated in the field if the need arose.

The last time Hinata had attempted the ceremony, it had been nothing short of a complete disaster. She had just turned six - young, but Neji had been younger when he'd done his - and she hadn't been ready for it. Her Byakugan had yet to manifest, her weapon skills were weak, and her resolve had not yet been strong enough to stand the thought of killing anything, even something that was already dead. The whole thing had ended with her bursting into tears in front of the majority of the clan and refusing to hurt the ghost even as it raged and threatened her. Everyone had stared at her unflinchingly as she slowly broke down, their accusing gazes without remorse, until Neji couldn't take it anymore and had darted out to protect her shaking body from the stares and ended the ghost himself. It had been a huge breach of protocol and he'd been punished for it afterwards, but Neji had been eleven at the time and hadn't known enough to care.

Shortly after that, Hinata's stutter had developed, and scarcely a week later he had been tasked with certain parts of her education, with the idea that he would become her full-time tutor after he turned eighteen.

Now that he could look back on the whole situation, Neji suspected that this was also the point where their grandfather had started plotting ways to strip Hinata of her birthright and give it to him instead.

By the mutters breaking out all across the rom and the not-so-subtle glances thrown in his direction, Neji could tell that most of the room's thoughts were running along the same lines as his were - minus the birthright conspiracy, of course. He saw Hinata's shoulders tremble under the weight of the judgemental stares resting on them, but she stood firm and refused to let her chin drop down.

"And so," the Elder continued in his speech as if the ruckus of suspicion hadn't caused him to pause, "we at the High Council have seen fit to award her request in light of recent events. Hinata, just a few days ago, assisted in the capture of a high-level spirit - a capture in which she was instrumental. She single-handedly tracked down a ghost that has been skirting around our radar to haunt Seattle for weeks now, then held the ghost immobile while waiting for a retrieval team to arrive on site. Later, when the ghost was brought back for classification, it was discovered that it was a wraith."

Neji suddenly felt his heart beat a little faster. Shikamaru knew how to take a hint; he was probably back in Konoha by now. Right?

And yet, a sense of doubt remained in Neji's mind. What other wraith could be lingering around a place as dangerous as Seattle, and for weeks no less?"

When the Elder spoke again, there was a note of smug triumph in his voice. "The wraith has resisted our best efforts to assist it in relinquishing its hold on this world, so we have decided that it fits the criteria for the First Blood Trial, and to let Hinata have it for her demonstration."

By the sudden jerk of Hinata's shoulders, Neji could tell that she hadn't been expecting this. Her knees started to tremble and threatened to send her to the floor, but she got ahold of herself at the last second and managed to keep upright.

With a smile that seemed to Neji sadistic - though that might have just been due to the red started to overcome his vision - his grandfather gestured to the guard of a door in the back of the courtroom used exclusively for the First Blood Trail, because it led directly into the dungeon-like maze of cells under the main compound used for the detention of dangerous ghosts who refused to fade. The guard saluted and disappeared behind the door, but soon reappeared with several other people- and a ghost wrapped in chains.

The ghost was bound from shoulder to toe with silver chains, the kind made from the special alloy to interact but not burn, and his wrists were handcuffed with the same. A cloth hood interwoven with threads of the same silver alloy rested over the top half of his head, hiding his identity. It was up to the participant in the Trial whether or not they removed it. Some people couldn't stand to see the face of the one they killed, but to others it was a sign of stature and ability. The only part of his face that was on display was his mouth and chin, but Neji was familiar enough with those lips that he knew who it was.

The ghost remained silent and still as he was pulled into the center of the room, though a smile played about his mouth that was impossible to interpret without seeing the rest of his expression. The whole of Neji's body was frozen, unable to move, as he found himself fixated on that smile; he wasn't even sure if he was still breathing. When the ghost had reached the predetermined spot before Hinata, the guards dragging him forward stopped and affixed the ends of the chains he was wrapped in to the hooks sunk down into the marble tiling of the floor and covered in such a way that it was almost impossible to catch sight of them unless one already knew they were there. The guards, their job complete, retreated, though the foremost guard bowed and extended a silver knife to Hinata, which she took with trembling, uncertain hands, before taking his leave.

"Hinata, you now hold in your hand the tool of both life and death, passed down for generations in our family since a Hyuuga first cried out in fear at the sight of a ghost," the Elder's voice boomed out into the courtroom, making Hinata jump so hard, she almost dropped the knife with a squeak. "But the power both it and we wield is not to be taken lightly. Prove to us, here and now, Hinata, that you possess the responsibility - and the ability - to wield such a power. Claim your First Blood."

Neji could only see Hinata from the back, but from the hunch of her shoulders and the way the hand not holding the knife curled around her middle, he could tell that she was fighting off nausea caused by nerves, a common side effect she got when being asked to do something in front of a large group of people. The knife point trembled in the air, and the ghost's head shifted as if he was scenting it, then a sad smile that chilled Neji played about his mouth. He said something to Hinata so low for Neji to catch even if his ears were working properly - too low for anyone in the room to hear besides his intended audience - and Hinata jerked back with a gasp and fell down to one knee as if the words themselves had burned her as much as the bite of silver could burn him.

The ghost's smile turned a little wry as he heard Hinata's reaction to him, and he repeated himself. This time, Neji was able to read the words that fell too quietly for him to hear from the ghost's lips: _I said, are you going to kill me now, little Hyuuga_?

Neji gritted his teeth and found his hands clenched into fists at his sides. Every instinct in his body was screaming at him to get up, to dive between Hinata and the threat, to protect her as he'd done for years and ease every burden she might need to carry. They were hard to fight, even though he'd resolved after the concert where Hinata sang to let her make her own mistakes. If she never tried anything, she would never know what she could do. There was one difference between the concert and this trial, though: Neji had assumed that she would fail at the concert, but here he knew that she would fail this trial.

But perhaps it would be good for her to fall down, and then have to learn to stand back up.

Just as she was doing now, her body shaking as she pulled herself up onto both feet again, but her stance resolved. The knife still shook in her grasp, but she gripped it lightly as she strode towards the ghost and laid it against his collarbone, where it left a red line on his skin.

"Yes, I am," she answered loud enough that Neji was able to pick it up. "You broke the laws of natural order when you decided to stay behind instead of passing on where you were supposed to go, and now you must pay the price for that. Do you have any final words before I send you into oblivion?"

For a moment, the ghost's lips twitched in pain, then they widened in a smile that unnerved even Neji halfway across the room. Hinata was frozen waiting for him to speak, but the ghost's smile only grew wider. Her hand started to shake and the knife shook with it, making erratic silver burn lines appear all over the ghost's neck.

"Wh-why are you s-smiling?" She gasped. "Wh-why aren't you af-afraid of m-me?" Still the ghost did nothing but smile, and Hinata's harsh breathing echoed through the silent courtroom. Her whole body rocked with the force of her heaving breaths. Neji could see the point when everything finally became too much for her and she struggled backwards before she slashed the knife desperately at the ghost's throat then collapsed on the ground as it had burned her as well. She curled in on herself with a heart-wrenching sob.

Neji only moved from his seat into the center of the room towards her after he was positive that she had missed, the ghost's neck still rising out of his army jacket clean and unblemished save for the red lines Hinata had left across his collarbone. He felt the disapproving eyes of the whole room upon him as he walked across the floor, but he paid them no mind and crouched down in front of Hinata, laying a soft hand on her shoulder.

"It's okay, Hinata. You don't have to hurt anyone."

Hinata looked up at him with tears streamed down her face. "B-but… but… I c-can't be useless… I w-won't be a f-failure...!"

"Just because it hurts you to hurt someone else does not mean that you're a failure, Hinata," Neji said soothingly.

She choked on abother sob. "Wh-why are you so g-good to m-me? After every… everything I d-did to you! I t-told you… I told you…"

"I know," Neji said it with a kind smile. "But that what big brothers are here for, aren't they?"

Hinata launched herself into Neji's arms with a wail. Burying her face into the side of his neck and clutching at the back of his jacket with desperate fingers, she sobbed herself out. Her tears wet his collar, but he didn't mind, just patted her hair and whispered soothing nothings into her ear.

"I-I d-d-don't w-want-t t-to d-do this!" She sobbed against Neji's skin. "I c-can't…! It h-h-hurts wh-when they h-hurt…!"

"I know. You won't have to do this," Neji promised the top of her head. "Say strong. Stand up to them. You don't have to be a fighter to be an asset. Show them that."

She stiffened slightly in his arms. It was clear that this was not what she'd expected him to say. "Wh-what?"

"Today will change everything, Hinata. I don't know how yet, but it will. I hope this isn't the case, but there's a chance I'm not going to be able to protect you anymore. You're going to need to be able to stand up on your own." He kissed the top of her head. "But from what you've shown me at the concert, you won't have any problems with that. Just be careful to know your limits too, because in times like this I may not be able to be your failsafe anymore."

"N-Neji-"

"Neji Hyuuga!"

The voice boomed out into the room with livid power, and Hinata shuddered in Neji's arms at the sound. He looked up to see his grandfather's furious face from where he was sanding at the forefront of the room.

"I would have thought that you would have learned you lesson by now in meddling in affairs where you don't belong, but I see now that I was mistaken! How much longer will you insist upon testing my patience?"

"As long as it takes," Neji replied with just enough volume that it would carry to the Elder.

He audibly gritted his teeth. "Your tenacity is impressive Neji, I will give you that, but you need to learn when it is appropriate! You must follow our rules, or you will face retribution!"

"Fine."

The Elder's face darkened. "What did you say?"

"I said, 'fine'. That's fine. I won't back down on this."

A delicate shade of puce started to line the Elder's forehead. "Such impertinence will not be tolerated, Neji! You cannot show such blatant disregard for our customs! Like all Hyuuga, Hinata must perform the First Blood Trial at some point in her life, and yet here you have interfered with it for a second time-!"

"Then maybe you should stop holding her to standards you arbitrarily set without ever stopping to think if she could ever uphold them!" Neji interrupted furiously. "You know Hinata is soft-hearted, you know she could never be able to hurt anything- or you do now after _this_ fiasco." He gestured to the knife on the floor and the smirk still frozen on the ghost's face, though because Neji was familiar with that face he could tell that the ghost was listening very intently to everything that was being said.

Struggling down from his dias, Neji's grandfather made his way across the floor with a thunderous expression. "Our customs are customs for a reason! We cannot make exceptions-"

"But times are changing Outside, so we need to change as well!" Neji stood his ground in the face of his oncoming grandfather with his hands balled into fists at his side. "On the Outside, they have a classification called Conscientious Objector, which allows someone to escape the draft; I see no reason why something of the same cannot be created for our family-"

This time, the Elder gave Neji no forewarning before backhanding him across the face. The signet ring on his finger ripped through the skin on Neji's cheek in the exact same spot as before, but deeper, scoring out the old still-healing scar and replacing it with what Neji knew would be a larger and more permanent one. The strike was strong than the last slap he had endured, but this time he refused to fall like he had before. His head snapped to the side with the force of the blow, but he snapped it right back to glare at his grandfather.

To his surprise, the look on the Elder's face was almost sympathetic. Leaning forward, he said low enough that only Neji would be able to hear him, "Neji, I know this seems cruel to you now, but we have no other way here. If Hinata wants that changed, she must do it herself. Otherwise, she will always be a failure in the eyes of the Hyuuga clan."

"She is not a failure," Neji ground out from between gritted teeth.

"The lump of useless sniveling flesh sitting on the floor right now refutes your point quite nicely." The Elder seized Neji's shoulder and brought his mouth close to his ear "I know you figured out what I'm offering you, Neji. Don't you want that? Don't you want the power I wield?"

A shiver went down Neji's spine, despite the warmth of the many bodies pressed close together in the courtroom, and without his express consent he found his lips forming a quiet, "Yes…"

"Good." The Elder clapped Neji on the shoulder, then leaned back. When he spoke again, his voice was loud enough to carry across the full room. "Then if you expect that the transgression of disrupting another's First Blood Trial to be forgiven for a second time, you must pay recompense. As it is obvious Hinata is unable to fulfill the duty, you must enact it in her stead. Finish what she started."

Neji stared at him, unblinking. "You're joking."

"No, I'm not." Keeping careful eye contact with Neji, the Elder leaned down and picked up the silver blade Hinata had dropped, then extended it to him. "Take the knife, Neji."

"I'm not going to-!"

"Perhaps I was not clear enough," the Elder hissed through clenched teeth. "Take the knife and use it to end that thing, or your blood will wet its blade instead."

The threat worked; Neji still couldn't bring himself to pluck the knife from his grandfather's grasp, but he held his hand out, palm upwards, and allowed it to be placed in his possession. A lump formed in his throat as it touched his palm, but he still forced his fingers to curl around the hilt. There was only so far disobedience could get him before it turned on him and the consequences of his actions ate him alive.

"Now kill that wraith."

The command was unnecessary; Neji was already moving towards the hooded ghost. On his journey, he passed Hinata's form on the floor, and she grasped at his pant leg, forcing him to stop.

"N-no, N-Neji, you c-can't… It's all m-my f-fault… I know how m-much he-!"

"Hush, Hinata." Neji quieted her before she could spill his secret in front of the entire courtroom. The smile he gave her was pained, but tender. "It's not your fault."

"B-but I was the one wh-who f-found him-m… c-called in h-his l-location… I w-wanted it to hurt you, b-but I d-didn't think… I n-never knew they w-would use him-m like th-this. I'm s-sorry, N-Neji, s-so s-sorry!"

The sharp inhale of Neji's surprise was audible throughout all the corners of the courtroom. With measured tension in his limbs, he brushed Hinata's grasp from his pants. "Then this is a consequence of your actions, and you will have to live with whatever happens here."

Hinata pressed a hand to her mouth. "N-Neji…? What d-do you m-mean by that?"

"Exactly what I said."

With that, Neji brushed past her and continued on to the ghost, who was still hooded and chained to the floor in the center of the courtroom. He stopped directly in front of the bound ghost and studied the little of his face that he could see. The hand unoccupied with the knife reached out to touch the hem of the hood, but he didn't pull it off yet. Maybe he could just do it quickly, pretend that it was someone else? After all, it wasn't like he'd seen the ghost's face. It could be anyone. He had no proof if his identity.

Who was he kidding?

"Get on with it!" Someone shouted from the sidelines, but was quickly shushed by his neighbors. Neji pointed the knife in his direction without looking away from the hooded ghost in front of him.

It was no use; he had to see him, even if it was only going to be for one last time.

In a single swift movement, Neji pulled the hood from the ghost's face and threw it onto the floor behind him, staring into the familiar dark eyes he knew so well.

"Hello, Shikamaru."

Shikamaru grinned lazily back at him. "Hello, Neji. Fancy meeting you here."


	45. Embrace the Outside

Your wish is my command! Finally, the reveal of Shikamaru's plan! Did anyone guess it?

* * *

Shikamaru's eyes roved around the high vaulted ceiling of the courtroom with interest. "I say, Neji, your family is very interesting. I've been treated with such respect here, the likes of which you wouldn't believe. I even got my own private room. What do you think of that?"

Neji ignored Shikamaru's bland comments, which he knew were intended only to get a rise out of him. "What are you doing here?"

"I would have thought that would have been obvious." Shikamaru raised a single eyebrow and lifted his cuffed hands as far up as they would go. "I've been captured and am being led to my righteous execution. And would you look at that- it looks like you're going to be my executioner. Fancy that. Are you going to take that there blade and stab it _deep inside_ me?"

The words were said with such an unexpected degree of heat that it took Neji by surprise, bringing a tinge of red to his cheekbones as it conjured up memories from the only night where Neji had ever let his iron-clad control slip. "That's not what I meant. I thought I told you that you weren't welcome in my life anymore," he snapped in retribution, ignoring the way the ghost's smile widened when he caught sight of his pinkening cheeks.

"Again, Neji, captured. Those usually aren't voluntary."

"For some reason, I don't quite believe you." Neji stared pointedly at the chains wrapped around Shikamaru's body. He was only able to spot them because he knew what he was looking for, but he saw the shadows of the chains against his clothes were a margin larger than they should have been and writhed gently. "Let's stop this charade, shall we? I think we both know you could get out of those restraints in a moment if you wanted to."

"Neji, what are you doing? Stop talking to it and just kill it!" The Elder suddenly shouted across the room from where he had retaken his seat, a new edge to his voice that took Neji several seconds to recognize as fear.

But Neji just ignored the cry from his grandfather and kept his eyes focused squarely on Shikamaru's face, which had lost a little of its smugness.

"If that's what you want, then fine."

The chains suddenly clacked around his body as his shadow loosened them, then they fell down on the floor and he stepped out of them with an air of someone taking great pains to do something that didn't matter to them one way or another. The crowd gasped and a few people jerked out of their chairs and screamed.

"Neji, what are you waiting for?! End it!" His grandfather screamed, his voice starting to go hoarse with badly hidden desperation.

Neji ignored them all and glanced pointely at the handcuffs still binding Shikamaru's wrists. "Are you telling me that you can't get those off as well?"

"Don't you think I've already tried? The clasp is made from pure silver; you should know that. I can't touch it."

He held his bound wrists out for Neji's inspection, and Neji saw that indeed, instead of a lock that a key would fit into, the handcuffs were held together with a spring mechanism that required reaching inside a small hole and depressing a lever made of pure silver to detach them. He looked up just in time to catch Shikamaru's sly grin.

"You wouldn't consider undoing them for me, would you?"

"You do know that I'm in a position to kill you right now, don't you?" Neji held up the knife for emphasis.

"Please, Neji, don't insult my intelligence. I think we both know that if you were going to kill me, you would have already done it."

He was… not wrong. Now that Neji had seen the ghost's face, it would be that much harder to hold the knife to his throat. But not impossible. Neji could only hope that his sense of duty hadn't fallen that far.

Who was he kidding?

Neji glanced around the room to make eye contact with his grandfather, whose face was tight with fear. He made solid eye contact with him, then held the knife aloft and dropped it on the ground. The silver made a ringing noise like the sound of a pure bell being struck when it hit the marble, cutting through the panicked din of the room like a fiery arrow through an overcast night.

"No. I won't."

The Elder's jaw dropped, and Neji felt a little proud at having put that expression there. "Wha… you… but… This is impossible! You are a Hyuuga! You have a duty! You must… you must…"

"I must _nothing_ ," Neji said very clearly. "As an act of civil disobedience, I refuse to end this ghost. Find someone else to do your dirty work for you."

He stalked all the way across the floor of the courtroom towards the door with his head held high, but before he got there Neji found the doors had been secured shut with several shadows in the shape of live snakes that hissed at him when he tried to reach for the doorknob. The people around him screamed and threw themselves backwards from the door when they saw the live shadow creatures, but Neji only turned around with a weary expression to see Shikamaru with his wrists separated, one hand in the air to control the shadows that were starting to flicker in every corner of the courtroom.

"I knew you were lying about being able to take those off," he said.

Shikamaru raised his other hand in the air to show off the nasty burn that was already starting to blister on his first two fingers, courtesy of the latch that he must have broken in order to get the cuffs off.

"Actually, I wasn't."

The well trained members of the Hyuuga family had managed to keep themselves mostly intact up until that point, but at the sight of a proclaimed wraith standing completely unsecured in the center of their most sacred courtroom, everything broke into the chaos of a riot. People started screaming all around them and stampeded to pound on the door, but the snakes grew in size and refused to let them pass. Desperate people darted everywhere, hiding under the Council's table or trying to exit behind doors that they weren't supposed to enter, but everywhere they went they were confronted with shadows that herded them back into the stands they had just emptied out of. The only four constant points in the room were Neji, watching Shikamaru wreak this destruction, Hinata still crying on the floor, the shell shocked elder, and the wraith himself. He said something with his eyes locked on Neji's, but Neji couldn't hear him over the riot in the room and only shook his head.

Instantly a web of shadows shot out from Shikamaru's hand and flew across the room to catch Neji and drag him forward. He didn't resist; he knew it would be pointless to, and wasn't sure he could even if that wasn't the case. When the shadow sebs had brought him within five feet of the ghost, they dropped him again and flew up to form a cage around them both that soon solidified to a sphere of darkness that blocked out all outside light and noise. Despite that, Neji found that he could still see every detail of Shikamaru's face with crystal clarity.

"So you were telling the truth, then? About not wanting me around anymore?"

"Of course." Despite himself Neji took a step forward. "I already told you: I was fabricating a fantasy life for myself. I have a duty to my family and my clan, and to Hinata. I can't take what I want so selfishly without considering them."

A small measure of victory shone in Shikamaru's eyes. "So you admit that you want me?"

"I thought that had already been established."

"Neji." Shikamaru's expression sent serious for the first time since Neji had taken his hood off. "What if I told you that I had found a way? That you could get out of your marriage, protect Hinata, and stay with me at the same time?"

Neji shook his head, forcing the hope that had begun to spring up in his breast at Shikamaru's words back down from the chasm whence it came. He'd already learned this lesson about false chances. "It's impossible. I've been fighting this marriage for years, and I still haven't found a way for even just that. And besides…" _Besides, I don't even know if I want to fight it anymore_ , he added in his mind, but he didn't say the words out loud.

"There is," Shikamaru insisted. "It's not a lie, I swear. But I'll only tell you if you promise to consider it."

"No," Neji instantly disagreed. "Tell me now, then I'll decide if I want to consider it or not. I'm not going along with a hairbrained plan of yours just because you have no sense of self-control and don't know when you quit when you've been beaten."

"But I haven't been beaten yet." Shikamaru closed the gap between himself and Neji by half. "I'm here, aren't I? You haven't run off on me yet."

"As if I could," Neji snorted with a pointed glance at the cage of shadow surrounding them.

"That barrier only works one way," Shikamaru announced, to Neji's surprise. "The people outside can't get in, but you can leave if you want. The only thing is," he added quickly after Neji started to move towards the shadow wall, "Once you leave, you can't get back in. If you leave, I'll teleport out of here and I swear that this time you really will never see me again."

Neji took another step back closer to the wall, and this time Shikamaru made no protest when he reached out a hand to touch the walls made of shadow. The material was like none other he'd ever felt before, even having felt Shikamaru's shadows on his body in many different ways and places, and it stretched briefly under the pressure of his hand before giving way and allowing it to slip through. It would be so easy, Neji thought. All he would have to do would be take a single step forward, and this chapter in his life would be closed, just like he'd thought had already happened. He could go back to his normal life, figure things out with Hinata, apologize to the elders, and maybe even convince them to forgive him enough that his grandfather would still consider naming him his Heir.

What a boring life that seemed, now that he thought about it.

Withdrawing his hand back through the barrier, Neji turned back around. "What's your plan?"

Shikamaru hadn't been looking at him; his face was turned to the side, as if he couldn't bear the sight of Neji leaving him for a second - third - however many times they'd done this, Neji had lost count. His head jerked up at the sound of Neji's voice, and the hurt on his face quickly melted away into a grin when he saw him still standing there.

"Whenever you or anyone else seems to talk about your family, it's always something along the lines of, 'our free will is forfeit as long as we carry the name of Hyuuga'." He paused to let that sink in for a moment, but it still didn't make any sense to Neji. "I always thought that was strange… _the name of Hyuuga_. Why include that? Why not just say every descendent of Hyuuga or something like that?"

Neji frowned. "It has to do with the Byakugan. Any relationships with people from the outside sometimes produce children who don't have the family gift. They aren't allowed to take the name of Hyuuga, even if it was their father who was a Hyuuga, and anyone born with the gift has to take it, even if their mother was the Hyuuga. It's a way of keeping track of the power so it doesn't get loose on the outside. Anyone without the gift but with Hyuuga ancestry is not under Hyuuga Clan jurisdiction because they are unable to pass our powers along if they do not manifest. Why does that matter?"

"Because," Shikamaru stated with clipped clarity, "to my best understanding, in order to be forced to obey their laws, you must carry the surname Hyuuga. If someone doesn't, they could refuse them and not get in trouble for it."

Neji's jaw dropped. "Your plan for this is for me to run away from my family and my duties?! I can't believe this!"

"I never said that you had to like my plan," Shikamaru said with honesty shining in his eyes. "In fact, I was fairly certain you wouldn't."

"Then why even bring it up?!" Neji hissed, stabbing the air in Shikamaru's direction with a finger emphatically.

"Because it will work." Shikamaru held his hands out to Neji. "And there is still a chance you might agree to it, however small that chance might be."

"You're crazy; I would never leave my family! They-"

"Have done nothing but manipulate you to their advantage your entire life," Shikamaru finished for him. "Make a decision for yourself for once in your life without relying on them to do it for you, Neji! You are a human with wants and desire, and they view you as a pawn! Please, at least consider it!"

"I… I…" Neji shook his head desperately. "I _can't_ , Shikamaru."

"Can't, or won't?"

" _Can't_ ," Neji repeated. "Hinata, Shikamaru. I can't leave her."

"Have you ever stopped to think that maybe you're the reason she has so many problems now?" Shikamaru threw his arm to the side, pointing through the opaque wall of shadows where Hinata presumably sat, though Neji couldn't see to confirm his guess. "Think about it, Neji- if you left, they'd stop comparing her to you, they'd arrange for a better match for her - don't think I didn't hear that, by the way, you're not fooling me about that anymore - but most of all, she would stop relying on you to do everything for her! Don't you want to see what she can accomplish on her own?"

"Of course I want to see it!" Neji replied hotly. "That's why I have to _stay_!"

"What about me, then!" Shikamaru suddenly shouted, Neji felt all his arguments turn to ash on his tongue. "I've tried everything else, so let's move on to this one. What about me, Neji? What about how you feel about me? What about the fact that I put myself in bodily danger, let myself get captured, because I wanted to get you back. Because _I love you_."

Neji's knees weakened and sent him crashing down to the floor. He shook his head desperately, willing the words to disappear, willing his mind not to have heard them, because the floodgates had opened up inside him and that traitor, hope, was starting to rampage through his body again.

Shikamaru kneeled in front of him and laid a hand on Neji's cheek, forcing him to look up into his eyes. " _I love you_ ," he repeated again, the truth in the statement ringing in Neji's ears. "Please tell me that means something to you, Neji."

Neji was frozen in place, unable to pull away. His lips trembled with the force he had to use to keep them from repeating the words back to the ghost. Shikamaru leaned closer and laid his forehead against Neji's. The subtle almost-warmth of it was familiar and comforting.

"Neji," he whispered. "I love you. Please kiss me."

Before Neji knew what he was doing, his lips were on Shikamaru's with a scorching heat, and he seized the back of the ghost's head to keep him in place. For a moment, he appeared shocked with the fervor with which Neji kissed him, but then he attacked back with equal measure, clawing at the side of Neji's face to keep him in place. Neji hissed in pain as one of his fingers hit the wound on his face where his grandfather's ring had ripped open his skin, but the injury wasn't deep and he ignored it at he pressed himself closer to Shikamaru.

"You're bleeding," Shikamaru breathed into Neji's open mouth.

Neji gave an incredulous sound halfway between a snort and a moan. "You think I fucking care?"

"Obviously… mh, obviously not."

With a great force of will, Neji pulled back from Shikamaru and gasped for air.

"Well, I think that answers that question," the ghost murmurered as he pressed fingers that Neji noticed were shaking against his lips.

"What… ah… what question?"

"Of whether you were as emotionally invested in this as I was." With a hard glint in his eyes, Shikamaru leaned back in towards Neji. For a second, though the ghost was going to kiss him again, then he just reached up and brushed his thumb along the scratch on Neji's cheekbone.

"I…" Neji shook his head, dislodging Shikamaru's hand from his face. "Fucking damn it. This wasn't supposed to happen!"

"Did you honestly think you would get away with agreeing to what we were doing without forming some kind of emotional attachment?"

"Yes!" Neji snapped, then just as quickly sighed. "No. No, I knew I was playing with fire. I just didn't think it would hurt so much when I got burned."

"Shadows don't burn," Shikamaru murmured, leaning so close that his lips brushed Neji's when he spoke. "They keep the flames from getting too strong."

"Well, they're not doing their job well enough," Neji gasped out before he pulled Shikamaru back toward him.

* * *

Hinata was too frozen in terror to scream when the shadows ate Neji alive, but that was not the case for much of the population in the room. As the bubble housing Neji and the wraith shrank to a sphere barely seven feet in diameter, more shadows jumped up from the ground and ran up the walls in a terrifying game of tag. When a shadow touched a person, it latched onto them and refused to let go. The shadows, she realized as she was forced to sit and watch their terrifying movements across the floor by her uncooperative frozen body, weren't actually hurting people, just scaring them, though their victims were screaming loud enough to them to be really hurt.

A shadow in the form on a small snake suddenly came up to Hinata, and she hissed in a sudden breath as it cocked its head to the side, considering her. Maybe it was because it recognized her or maybe it was because she wasn't running away and it didn't deem her a threat, but it lowered itself back to the floor and quickly slithered away to find another target.

The action hadn't gone unseen by the Elder, who stood up and used his Lord Hyuuga voice to command quiet over the panicked assembly.

"Nobody move! They are attracted to movement!"

Everyone froze, not wanting to be the only one disobeying the Lord Hyuuga's orders. As soon as those who had been captured by a shadow creature stopped struggling, the shadows' holds loosened and they slipped back to hide against the walls of the courtroom. Small sounds of fear permeated the room, but the whimpers were silenced by the Lord Hyuuga's next order.

"Keep silent!"

Standing up slowly, he carefully walked around the edge of the table, keeping a close eye on the the shadow creatures that stirred at his slow step but made no move to attack him. The same thing happened as he slowly made his way across the floor to the sphere of shadow, the creatures stirring at his step and hissing at him in voices the timber of fabric being dragged across skin, but as soon as he stepped within a few paces of the sphere, they reared up and snapped at him until he stepped back again.

Hinata was smart enough to not try the same, but she had a good idea of what was going on inside that bubble and wanted to see for herself. Closing her eyes, she gathered all the energy in her body focused it in her face.

"Bya- Byakugan-n!"

Unfortunately, when Hinata opened up her eyes, she still saw the same landscape as before. Anger rushed through her body at her inability to do anything right, and she latched onto it. SHe had felt this before, right before she had screamed aloud sentences without a hint of her customary stutter. She let the anger rip through her and used it to fuel her power.

"Byakugan!"

She had forgotten to close her eyes, and the sight of the room swimming in front of her vision and morphing to that of spectral plane was disorenting. For a moment, she didn't even recognize that she was staring at the silhouette of her cousin and the wraith inside the bubble until she saw the dimmer spark that represented Neji's human body fall to its knees.

All of a sudden, Hinata felt a hand fall on her shoulder and she jumped at the sensation, jerking around to stare at the form of her grandfather. All the confusing bits of light and color swam through his aura too fast for Hinata to keep track of, and she quickly looked away, both in respect and so she wouldn't get motion sickness.

"What do you see? What are they doing?"

"They… they're talking."

The aura of the wraith shone out easily through the side of the bubble, despite how dark it was. As Hinata watched, he fell to his knees as well in front of the kneeling Neji, then reached forward to hold his jaw tenderly.

"Is that all? Are you positive that's all they're doing?"

Just then, Neji's spark leaned forward and collided with the wraith's in a desperate kiss. Hinata averted her gaze and dropped the power of the Byakugan. As it leached out of her eyes, it took with her the anger blazing a path through her body and left her feeling weak and drained.

"I'm s-sure."

* * *

Shikamaru pulled back from Neji's insistent mouth with a gasp. "Neji, this isn't constructive. Can we please decide what to do first?"

"'M procrastinating," Neji muttered, trying to draw the ghost back in. When he refused to make himself pliant to Neji's demands, Neji instead settled for leaning forward and pressing a series of kisses down the ghost's neck that started out light, then grew heavy.

"You seem to be doing a very good job of it," Shikamaru muttered before pushing Neji away again. "Neji. Listen to me. I need to get out of here, and I need to know if you're coming with me."

The words were an abrupt slap in the face from reality, and Neji jerked backwards as if he'd been stung. He pushed himself to his feet and started pacing the length of the bubble. "I can't, Shikamaru, you know why-!"

"Oh, believe me, I know, because you never shut up about it."

Neji whirled around to see that Shikamaru had also gotten to his feet, his arms folded across his chest.

"Excuse me?"

"You told me not to make you choose between me and Hinata, because you would always choose Hinata." Shikamaru's eyes narrowed. "I'm not asking that now. I'm asking you to choose both me _and_ her. Please, Neji."

"It's not that simple, Shikamaru-!"

"I say it is. For years, you protected Hinata by staying by her side. Now, you can protect her by leaving her." Shikamaru extended a hand towards him. "Please, Neji. Trust me."

But Neji did trust Shikamaru; that was the problem. He trusted him too much and would take his word over any other, before even what his own mind told him. He shook his head.

"I _can't_ , Shikamaru."

The ghost's eyes sharpened. "Can't, or won't? Are you afraid to leave this behind?"

"Of course I am!" Neji exploded, then ran a hand savagely through his hair, putting the strands into disarray. "You should know that better than anyone! I'm terrified! My entire life, my clan has told me what to do, and how to do it. Do you think I can just up and leave that, even if I'm unhappy with the system?"

"Not even if you had someone waiting for you on the outside?"

The words gave Neji pause, and his shoulders dropped. "I don't know. Maybe. But you don't count, Shikamaru. You've been dead for too long to be able to tell me how to function in the normal world. I don't have a marketable skills. What would I even do?"

His eyes flashed dangerously. "You're starting to consider it. You want to come with me."

"Of course I do." Neji let his head fall forward into his hands again. When he next spoke, his words were muffled by his palms. "I want to more than anything. But it's just not feasible."

"Of course it is. All you have to do is what you told Hinata: stand up on your own two feet and stop relying on others to dictate your life for you."

Neji's face shot up and he glared at the ghost in front of him. "Did you just use my own words against me?"

"You bet I did." Shikamaru again extended a hand to Neji. "This is your last chance, Neji. I want to take you away from all this. Will you come with me."

Neji stared at the open palm offered him. "I shouldn't want to."

"No, you probably shouldn't," Shikamaru agreed.

He took a tiny step towards the ghost. "It's a very bad idea."

"Most likely."

"And I won't see my family ever again."

"Definitely."

"So why do I want to say yes?"

Shikamaru's eyes burned with an unholy fire. "Because you love me."

Neji raised a shaking hand and let it rest on Shikamaru's open palm. It closed around his fingers as soon as he touched it, gripping with a vicious strength that said he was never going to let go again.

"You're right. I do."

Shikamaru's expression melted with his heart, and he threaded their fingers together, then brought them up to his mouth so he could kiss the backs of his knuckles. "You really want to come with me?"

"Yes. Yes, I do."

"You're absolutely sure?"

Growling low in his throat, Neji used their conjoined hands to snap Shikamaru closer to him. "I wish you'd stop asking me that. You already got me to change my mind once; don't push it in case it happens a second time."

Shikamaru completely ignored his words and broke the hold of their fingers so he could smooth both of his hands through Neji's hair. "And you love me?"

"I already said that I did."

"But I want to hear it." Shikamaru gave a gentle tug on Neji's hair. "Humor me. Please tell me that you love me."

"Fine." Neji caught Shikamaru around the middle and pulled him flush against his body. "I lived my entire life on someone else's whim until I met you, and you in turn baffled me, irritated me, annoyed me, and made me feel happier than I have been my entire life. So yes, Shikamaru. I love you. I love you more than I can ever describe. Is that good enough for you?"

Shikamaru's eyes practically shone in the dim light of the shadow bubble. "It's plenty." The ghost ran his hands through Neji's hair one final time before stepping away entirely. "Then let's see if you can say that in front of your entire family."

"What?!"

The shadow bubble melted away to reveal the courtroom again, which was in a state of disarray significantly higher than the one they had left it in. Neji's mouth dropped open as he surveyed the damage done to the room, the way the tables and chair had been overturned and the variety of shifting shadow creatures that hugged the walls, hissing suspiciously at anyone who dared get too close to either them or one of the exits from the room.

"You can't be serious!" He gasped, both to the state of the room and the ghost's request.

"I'm absolutely serious." Shikamaru folded his arms across his chest. "How much more difficult can it be from what you've already done?"

"Immeasurably! Shikamaru! I can't…! This isn't a game!"

"There you go again with the can'ts." Shikamaru shook his head disapprovingly. "Do you want to come with me or not?"

"I… I…" Neji glanced helplessly around him at their audience, and it was a good thing he did because he caught sight of his grandfather drawing a gun from the folds of his robes. "Look out!"

He threw himself on Shikamaru and knocked the ghost to the ground just as a bullet whizzed over their heads. Neji quickly got up and threw his arms out wide.

"Wait! Don't shoot, don't shoot!"

"Why?" His grandfather held the gun steady, pointing it at Shikamaru through Neji's chest. "I don't know how that thing convinced you it's harmless, but it doesn't have feelings, Neji! Get out of the way so I can shoot it! You can come back to us, I swear, just please, step away from it!"

"No!" Neji grabbed Shikamaru's hand behind him, their fingers entwining together even though Neji couldn't see the expression on the ghost's face. "You're wrong! He's not dangerous, Grandfather, I swear-!"

"You've lost the right to call me that if you side with that filth!" The Elder roared. "That's a wraith, Neji! You're no grandson of mine until you see reason!"

"Please, just listen to me-" Neji begged, but was cut off by the insistent tugging at his hand from the ghost behind him. He turned around he see Shikamaru's resigned expression.

"It's no use, Neji. He won't ever believe you. Deep down, I think you know that." His eyes flashed. "It's now or never."

"I… I…" Neji looked around helplessly again, but there was no way out but up. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to steel himself, then let it out slowly through his nose.

"Shikamaru," he started, opening his eyes to stare deep into the ghost's and making sure that his voice was loud enough that the entire room would be able to hear it. "I lived my entire life on someone else's whim until I met you."

Shikamaru's eyes sparkled as Neji started to repeat his words from earlier. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his grandfather's hold on the aim of the gun start to slip downwards as he listened to what Neji was saying.

"You in turn baffled me, irritated me, annoyed me… I could probably expand that list quite a bit," he added with a chuckle, then his expression turned serious again. "And you also made me feel happier than I have been my entire life. So yes, Shikamaru."

As if sensing what he was about to do, Hinata screamed, "N-no, Neji! D-don't do it! What are you thinking?"

Neji cast a brief look in her direction, and his heart broke when he saw that her face was streaked with fresh tears. "I'm sorry, Hinata," he murmured. "But I have to do this. I can't live like this anymore."

He turned back to Shikamaru and pulled the ghost toward him so their bodies were flush against one another. "I love you," he announced, and there was a loud gasp from the collective crowd of spectators. It bothered Neji, but he forged ahead. "I love you more than I can ever describe." A wry smile pulled up the corners of his mouth. "There. Was that good enough for you?"

In lieu of an answer, Shikamaru pulled Neji the rest of the way forward and kissed him like there was nobody watching them. Neji kissed him back, not caring that his grandfather, the entirety of Council of Elders, and the majority of the clan was watching him. Except perhaps Hinata, whose choked sobs he could hear even over the roar of outrage that had swept through the room as soon as their lips had met. He cared a little bit about her reaction, but not enough to push Shikamaru away.

The crack of the gun that rang out over the din of the room was too quick for Neji react. Without even needing to turn his head, he knew that the bullet would be aimed at them. With a gasp, he broke away from Shikamaru and tensed up with his eyes closed, waiting for the pain to explode in his back. When several seconds passed and nothing happened, he cracked his eyes open and turned his head just far enough to see his grandfather standing where he had been with the gun cocked and aimed, but with a very distinct difference: Hinata hung off of his arm, dragging his aim down to the floor, where the bullet had buried itself deep in the marble several paces in front of him.

Neji stared at his younger cousin in shock. She started to shake, and quickly let go of the Elder's arm when he turned a livid gaze on her.

"Why did you stop me, you worthless brat?! Do you take the side of evil now, too?"

Hinata shook, but squeezed her hands into fists at her side as she stood up to glare at her grandfather. "You c-can't hurt-t him-m! Even if-f he's m-making the wrong ch-choice, you c-can't h-hurt him!"

"And who are you to tell me what I can and cannot do?" He seethed, and by the way the vein in his forehead and the finger curling around the trigger were twitching, Neji could tell that he was seriously considering turning the gun on her, if only to scare her.

"A concerned member of the Hyuuga family with the same right to stand up to tyranny as anyone else!" She yelled suddenly, her eyes squeezing shut. The Elder's jaw dropped as her words rang the courtroom, followed by an avalanche of unsubtle mutterings from around her that forced her surprised eyes to pop open. She blanched when she saw them, but continued on shakily. "According t-to S-Section th-three, Sub-b Section-n s-seven A in the Hyuuga Con-Constitution, any H-Hyuuga has the r-right to ch-challenge the d-decisions of the L-Lord H-Hyuuga if they endanger the l-life or r-rights of a f-fellow H-Hyuuga in the name of the p-prevention of the d-decent into t-tyranny!"

Neji couldn't believe what he was hearing, then his face suddenly split apart in a wide grin of pride as he realized what Hinata had done. She had stood up to their grandfather, and used Hyuuga law to justify it. A small flash of pain accompanied the pride in his breast, but he pushed it down. She was strong enough to stand up on her own now; he shouldn't feel disappointed that she didn't need him anymore.

"She's right," Neji said, taking a step forward towards his seething grandfather. "You are duty bound to respect that law, _Lord Hyuuga_ , or face the consequences."

"You are endangering the lives of the Hyuuga around you by allowing yourself to be taken in by the lies of that _thing!"_

"Look around you!" Neji shouted back, gesturing wildly about the room at the people cowering in corners and under tables from the living shadows, which had only done their job of scaring them away from the action in the center of the room and prevented them from leaving, not attacked with the intent to harm. "Show me one person he has hurt here, and then tell me that Shikamaru is dangerous!"

"You gift that unworthy thing with a _name-?!_ "

"Because he deserves one, just the same as you or I!" Neji turned away from his grandfather to smile at Shikamaru, who reached out and twined their fingers together. "Because… because he taught me how to love."

"You're allowing yourself to be pulled in by its aura! That's what they _do_ , Neji!"

"And you're allowing yourself to be blinded by your anger!" Neji replied hotly, dropping Shikamaru's hand advance on his grandfather. "No matter what you say, I won't back down on this! I'm done living the lie you set out for me!"

"If you don't listen to what I say and stop endangering us with your stupidity and insincerity, I have the right to kill you to protect our family!" The Elder rebuked, his ears starting to turn an angry shade of red.

"It's not like you haven't done it before, for even lesser reasons. Isn't that right?"

Both Neji and his grandfather quickly shifted their gazes to the ghost standing behind Neji with his arms crossed over his chest and a stoney expression on his face.

"We do not lower ourselves to converse with the likes of you!" The Elder seethed, but Neji ignored him.

"What are you talking about? Shikamaru, what do you know that you're not telling me?"

"Don't take it personally, Neji. I have to protect her." He said just loud enough for Neji to make out, then raised his voice. "Does the name Namaki ring any bells?"

It didn't to Neji, but it was obvious that that was not the case for his grandfather, whose face lost most of its red color as anger drained from it like bloodied water from a bathtub when the plug was pulled, leaving behind a skim of filth but little else. "How did you learn that name?"

Shikamaru only grinned, triumphant. "Now, if I told you, that wouldn't be very fair, would it? You'd know which hole in your security system to patch."

The Elder's eyes went wide with fear. "But… those records are… how did you access… How long have you been stalking our family? Do you have some kind of grudge against us? Trying to bring us down from the inside?"

Shaking his head, Shikamaru gave a light smile. "No, my aspirations are nothing so lofty. All I want is right here." He encircled Neji's waist with an arm and drew him closer, and Neji felt his heart warm.

"Nothing but lies! I can see your true intentions, wraith! Your goal is to break apart our operation from the inside so you are your kind can ruin the world of the living with no opposition!" The gun didn't waver as it again pointed in Neji's direction, through him to the spirit he was protecting. "I won't stand for it! Neji, as Lord Hyuuga, I am ordering you to step away from it! This is your last warning before I shoot, and if I shoot, I will kill you!"

A wave of sadness washed over Neji's heart. Of course, he knew that there was no other way of ending this with anything but this or Shikamaru's second death, but it hurt to give up the hope that had lodged itself inside his breast that he might have both sides of his life coincide for a little longer. "Let's get out of here," he murmured into Shikamaru's ear, and the ghost nodded.

"Okay. Let's go."

The last thing Neji saw before the shadows came up around them was the betrayed face of Hinata as she reached out desperately for him, but then even that was lost to the darkness as Shikamaru whisked him away.


	46. Reversal

And here, just in case the first one didn't satisfy you enough, is some more shameless smut! Lemon warning for anyone who cares; it's basically the whole chapter, so if it isn't your thing skipping the chapter won't affect the storyline.

I want to thank everyone for this wonderful ride- I can now see it coming to a close. There are three chapter left, including the epilogue, so buckle up because we're getting done in a hurry now!

* * *

When the shadows cleared, they were back in Neji's apartment, and Neji allowed himself a moment in the arms of the ghost before he pushed him away.

"Get off me!"

"You're mad at me, aren't you," Shikamaru remarked, leaning up against Neji's bedpost like it wasn't a question.

"Hell, yes, I'm mad at you! I can't believe you actually convinced me to do that! I can't believe I left Hinata behind like that! I can't believe…" he trailed off, then shook his head in wonder. "I can't believe I'm free now."

"So not very much, then?" Shikamaru hedged with a grin.

In response, Neji reared back and punched him in the jaw, knocking Shikamaru backwards onto the bed.

"I suppose I deserved that," he mused as he sat up, rubbing his jaw. "But I can take it if it means you don't regret your decision."

"So that's why you made me do that?" Neji seethed. "Jesus, Shikamaru, why didn't you trust me when I said I wanted to go with you! Did you want to force me to burn all my bridges so I could never go back?"

"I wanted to make sure that you were absolutely certain. It's easy to say something and regret it later, but harder to make a production out of something your heart only wants in the moment," Shikamaru said, then added with a sheepish grin, "Though I can't say the burning of bridges didn't factor somewhat into my plan."

"Jesus!" Neji exclaimed, taking a step backwards from the ghost. "How much of that did you actually plan beforehand?"

"The getting captured part? All of it. Everything else, only about fifty percent. The rest I played by ear, but it worked out well enough." He coughed delicately. "Though I will admit to practicing some of those lines multiple times to make sure they were perfect. I wasn't taking any chances on getting you back."

Neji jumped up on the bed near Shikamaru and grabbed his shoulders with hard fingers. "Don't you _ever_ make me do something like that ever again," he growled, shaking him in time to his words.

Shikamaru's eyes widened in half surprise, half mock fear. "You have another crazy family I don't know about that you need to be broken away from?"

"You know what I mean." Neji pushed Shikamaru down and pinned him against the rumpled covers of the bed; he needed to feel in charge, a little less helpless, and the ghost quickly acquiesced to his unspoken demand. "Don't manipulate me like that again! It's an asshole thing to do!"

The ghost reached up and ran a hand along the line of Neji's jaw. "Can you honestly blame me?"

Neji couldn't, that was what the problem was. If the situation had been reversed, Neji knew that he probably would have done the exact thing Shikamaru had done. With a groan, he flopped down on top of the ghost, allowing his face to bury in the crook of Shikamaru's neck. "I hate you so much right now."

"I know that's not the case." Shikamaru shifted purposefully against Neji's body. "But do you also want to fuck living daylights out of me right now?"

" _Fucking hell_ I do."

Shikamaru growled appreciated in his ear and reached down to cup Neji's ass, grinding their hips together and bringing life to Neji's already half-hard dick. "That's what I'd hoped you would say."

"Shut up." Neji grabbed Shikamaru's chin and forced his face to angle itself in a way where it was easy for him to kiss the ghost. Their mouths collided in a messy impact of teeth and tongue, each giving twice what they took in desperation fueled by the high left over from the adrenaline no longer needed in their - or at least Neji's - bloodstreams. When Neji pulled away with a gasp, Shikamaru pulled desperately at the lapels of his jacket.

"Neji, quick… I need you…"

There was none of the gentleness and teasing slowness that accompanied their first time now; Neji ripped off his jacket and threw it across the room. "I am never wearing another suit ever again," he announced as his fingers flew down the buttons of his shirt, something's getting the two halves of the material to separate but mostly failing and tugging at the fabric until Shikamaru took pity on him and used his telekinesis to speed up the process.

"Hmm, that's a pity…" Shikamaru responded, his eyes glowing appreciatively when Neji's chest came into view. "I have to admit that I like the view of you in a professional outfit. I makes me want to wreck you."

"Maybe… on occasion… a tie then," Neji allowed, gasping for air as Shikamaru leaned up to spread kisses across his pecs and leave a light bite against one of his nipples. He groaned at the sensation, and that only prompted the ghost to bite down harder.

While Shikamaru was focused on his chest, Neji got to work stripping him as well, a task that was made easy by the fact that as soon as the fabric was pulled away from his skin, it dissolved into nothingness, leaving Neji with an uninterrupted view of the glorious muscles that he hadn't had enough time to worship earlier. He promised himself that he would spend an inordinate amount of time one day memorizing each and every curve, but that day was not today. Shikamaru hissed when the chill air hit his groin as Neji pulled at the waistband of his pants and they disintegrated into the general ether of the room, and Neji couldn't help but chuckle.

"That's what happens when you don't wear any underwear."

"Fuck… underwear…" Shikamaru gasped as he undid the front of Neji's pants and yanked out his cock over the top of his boxers. The pulsing flesh jumped in the ghost's hand, and Neji couldn't stop a groan from leaking out of his lips. "See what I… mean…? You can't… can't do _anything_ when it's in the way…"

"I disagree." Neji pushed Shikamaru's hands away and lowered his hips until they touched the ghost's, then he slowly began to rock them together, their lengths slipping past one another and catching on the fabric of Neji's pants. "How does… that feel?"

Shikamaru didn't respond in words; instead, he just keened his approval and grabbed at the back of Neji's neck, pushing his hair down to float around them both, like a curtain. A curtain that hid them away from the outside world.

Neji leaned down and kissed him through that curtain, drawing the sounds the ghost made into his own mouth. When he pulled away, Shikamaru gasped.

"Neji… I want you… I want you inside me. Would you do that?"

Jerking a little, Neji nodded, then hesitated, slowing the pace of his rocking hips as he thought. "I don't… what if I hurt you?"

"You won't," Shikamaru assured him, pressing upwards with a whine.

"But what if I do?"

"But you _won't_." The ghost arched his back, and Neji felt his stomach flip as the motion pressed their lengths together. "I trust you, Neji."

Neji let his hand wander down Shikamaru's side at the same time as he let a slow breath escape his nose. "O… okay."

A shiver of nervousness went down Neji's spine as he pulled back and discarded the remainder of his garments save his shirt, which he left unbuttoned and hanging off his shoulders like some kind of cape. When he was done, he reached for the drawer from which Shikamaru had pulled the supplies he'd used on Neji for their first time. "Is it still in here?"

"I haven't moved it if you haven't."

A faint blush dusted the tops of Neji's cheekbones; the thought of getting rid of it had entered his mind more than once during their time apart, but it was also competing with the thought skirting around the edges of his consciousness that maybe he would like to use it for himself, so he'd never been brave enough to even look in the drawer. He was glad of that now, though, as he pulled the bottle of lube from the drawer and brought it back to the bed, where Shikamaru lay waiting for him with his knees parted and raised into the air.

Neji felt a bubble of nervous unease sit uncomfortably low in his stomach as he retook his place between the ghost's legs, crooking one of Shikamaru's knees for better access. His dick jutted up into the air, hard and proud, as Neji gripped the thick, toned flesh of his thighs in a grasp hard enough that there would probably be marks when he let go.

Shikamaru stayed uncharacteristically quiet, perhaps after sensing the level of unease in Neji's mind. He wanted to do this, of course he did, but he didn't know exactly what he was doing, and that bothered him. There was no book of guidelines of how to best pleasure your partner. Besides, Shikamaru obviously had experience in these matters, which was why Neji had been able to trust him so completely the last time they… Neji had to swallow before he could think it. The last time they'd _had sex_. There was no way, as inexperienced as Neji was, that he could ever come close to what he hoped.

Neji shifted his hand up Shikamaru's thigh, a side effect of nervously biting his lip, and the movement tore a quiet intake of air, almost a gasp, from the ghost's lungs. Neji's head jerked up at the sound, and he saw Shikamaru's chest rise and fall in steady heaves as his cock twitched.

Maybe, Neji suddenly thought, sex was a lot like jazz. Sure, it was great when it was scripted, but the real magic happened when it was improvised.

And he was still a little pissed, as well. He could probably use that to his advantage.

Leaning down, Neji pressed his mouth to the inside of Shikamaru's thigh, humming appreciatively at the feel of the thick muscled against his cheek, then pressed a quick nip at the flesh before moving away to another spot where he repeated the treatment, closer to the apex of his thighs. Each time, Shikamaru jerked a little at the contact, as if he wasn't sure if the nip of pain was intentional or not, but he remained silent until Neji was close enough to his dick that he could kiss it, each breath he exhaled settling softly against his balls and the sensitive skin directly below them.

"Neji…" Shikamaru almost whined, and Neji felt a surge of pride at having brought the ghost to that.

"Stop complaining." Neji pulled back and reached for the bottle he had abandoned on the covers of the bed earlier. He grinned when a shiver went through Shikamaru at the sound of the cap snapping open. The amount of control being placed into his hands was heady.

The lube felt as cold against his fingers as he remembered it being against his ass, and he wondered if it would feel the same way to the ghost, considering his lower body temperature. To test his theory, Neji trailed a damp finger up the inside of Shikamaru's thigh and was rewarded with a flinch of awareness, but no shivers that stemmed from chill. Emboldened by the reaction, Neji spread his damp fingers against the meat of Shikamaru's thighs, pulling them apart before he teasingly dipped close to the place the ghost so obviously wanted to have touched.

"Are you… having fun… teasing me?" The ghost gasped as Neji pressed a finger against the hole he had bared for his inspection, close to entering him but just teasing for now.

"Not nearly enough." Neji leaned down and pressed a kiss, followed by a small bite, to the skin of his hip, right where his thigh connected to the rest of his torso. "But there'll be more than enough time for that later. We have forever now."

Shikamaru hummed appreciatively at the thought, shifting his hips a little to try and thrust up and connect with Neji's skin.

"Did I say you could do that, though?" Neji snapped, holding the ghost's hips down on the bed. "No, I didn't. You put me in charge for this, so you're going to let me do as I please."

The shock on Shikamaru's face was immensely satisfying to Neji, especially when it dissolved away into need when Neji finally got sick of teasing and pushed a thick, slicked up finger inside of him. The ghost slapped a hand over his mouth to cover up the groan he made at the rough move, but Neji didn't chastise him for it. Yet. Right now, he was enjoying the muffled sounds the ghost made as he fingered him open roughly, adding a second finger much quicker than Shikamaru had but keeping a close eye on him to make sure it wasn't too much. The anger bubbling in his stomach wanted to make Shikamaru feel helpless, not hurt him.

It was only when Neji added a third finger into the fray that he tore the hand away from Shikamaru's mouth, feeling his actions strangely validated when he heard the unmuffled gasps and moans making their way out of the ghost's throat.

"Was this how desperate you were for me to fill you up?" He gasped out from between gritted teeth, twisting his fingers until Shikamaru let out an unseemly yelp and arched off the bed. "There it is. That's how you're always teasing me, isn't it?"

"P-please, Neji," Shikamaru begged, surprising Neji with the willingness he had to sound so desperate. "Please, I can't take any m-more… I need you…"

Neji quickly pulled his fingers out, then just stared down at the mess he'd made of the ghost. Shikamaru's eyes were wide and dark, his skin flushed and streaked with spectral sweat that evaporated from Neji's hand as soon as it was no longer in contact with the ghost, and his cock twitching between his legs despite Neji not having touched it yet. The sight filled Neji with a kind of possessive power, and he reached down to quickly coat himself in the remaining lube on his fingers before lining up with Shikamaru's loosened entrance and pushing the tiniest fraction in.

Hissing in either pain or desperation, Shikamaru instinctively recoiled from the invasion before pushing back, trying to take more of Neji inside him, but Neji refused to budge, watching the beads of sweat form on the ghost's brow and drip down his temples before dissolving into the general ether of the room. With slow but steady purpose, he bared down and pushed inside Shikamaru until he was seated as deep as he could get. The ghost reached up desperately for Neji, but he refused to lean down and all Shikamaru could get ahold of was the tail ends of his hair drifting down into his grasp, which he wound his fingers through but didn't tug against with the intent to cause pain.

The sensation was unlike anything Neji had ever felt before; even the last time they'd had sex had felt nothing like this. The tightness surrounding him took his breath away, so different the sensation of being filled to the brim, almost past the point of bursting. Not better or worse, just different. He gave an experimental slow roll of his hips, just the tiniest of drags back and forward again, and Shikamaru's back arched up to meet him. Purposefully, Neji pushed him back down, enjoying the whine that escaped from the ghost's throat when his autonomy was taken away from him.

"And stay there," he muttered low under his breath as he settled back and shifted Shikamaru's leg higher out of the way so he could have better access. Again, a tiny bundle of nervousness opened up inside of him, but he squashed it down with the same half-anger, half-arousal that fueled his tight grip on Shikamaru's thigh. This wasn't some kind of rocket science; it was just fucking.

He drew back and snapped forward with a good amount of power and felt a rush of something hot in his chest when he saw the ghost react to it, nearly bending backwards and breaking in two in his attempt to push himself further onto Neji. With purposeful hands, Neji pressed flat down on Shikamaru's stomach and forced his bowed back to lay down against the bedspread again, trembling as his muscles tensed and relaxed in an unending loop of dizzying frequency. Gasping, Shikamaru reached for him, but Neji pushed his hand aside and pinned it to the mattress.

"Don't move," he ordered, and was half surprised when the ghost nodded in agreement, a line of spittle making its way down his chin. Neji reached up and wiped it away, but it dissolved against his fingertips as soon as he touched it.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Neji slipped the pad of a thumb into the ghost's mouth and brushed it against the bottom row of his teeth, and was rewarded with Shikamaru's tongue tracing a lusty pattern against it. He gripped it between his teeth with enough force to leave a mark but not break the skin, then licked the hurt away with that practiced tongue.

Breathing heavily, Neji pulled back and pushed forward again with increased fervor, starting up a ragged, merciless rhythm that had the ghost shaking underneath him. Shikamaru's mouth was occupied with his finger, otherwise Neji was sure he would be begging out loud, though for what, he couldn't say for certain. As it was, only broken moans that sounded almost like sobs tore their way out of his throat as Neji continued his brutal pace, pushing both of them past their limits. Shikamaru reached for him desperately, fingers scrabbling against the skin of his arms in an attempt to reach Neji's biceps and pull him closer, but Neji again pushed him away, seizing both of the ghost's wrists with a one-handed iron grip and preventing him from reaching for him again.

It was a heady sensation to watch Shikamaru, usually so contained and in control of every situation he was in, break apart under his ministrations. Neji dropped Shikamaru's wrists and dragged his now unoccupied hand up his side to feel the ghost's heaving diaphragm. As he explored up Shikamaru's side, one of his fingers suddenly dipped below the surface of the ghost's ribcage and hovered just inside his skin. Staring at the spot, Neji found himself fascinated with the way he could see his finger very faintly beneath the shimmering outline of the ghost's skin in the one place where he had failed to achieve full corporeality, the way the flesh of Shikamaru's ribs blended seamlessly with his own. Like they were joined; like they were one being.

The motion of his hips stuttered and dragged to a stop as the ramifications of that hit Neji. They were joined; they were one. The anger that had been plaguing him since the first moment he had pinned Shikamaru down on the bed drained out of him like dirty water out of a bathtub, leaving a hollow space that was soon filled with something clearer in origin, something that sparkled like a diamond under the pressures of his heart.

Shikamaru whined at the loss of motion, the action opening up his mouth so Neji could take his finger back. Leaning down, Neji allowed his hair to float around them like a halo and pressed his mouth to Shikamaru's, who returned the kiss eagerly. The ghost didn't protest the change of pace when Neji started to rock his hips slower again while keeping them connected at the mouth.

After they broke apart, Shikamaru gasped, "Neji…?"

"Shh." Neji pushed the hair away from Shikamaru's forehead, feeling the spectral sweat prickle his fingers as it disappeared into the ether of the room. "You don't have to… I just can't believe this is really happening."

"Mmm." Smiling, Shikamaru allowed his hands to float up Neji's back, one of them above the fabric of his shirt and one below, nails scratching at his shoulder blades. Neji hissed at the contact, the first he'd allowed the ghost to initiate since they'd started. "Believe it, because this is real. I'll never let you go."

With both hands, Neji cradled Shikamaru's jaw and stared into his eyes like they were the only thing keeping him anchored to this world. After a few steady blinks, Shikamaru's dark eyes drifted closed in a gesture of trust, and Neji pressed a gentle kiss to each one of the lids before increasing his pace to almost the same tempo has it had been before, except without the punishing feel to it. But this time, Neji refused to let the ghost leave his arms.

He was getting close; Neji could feel it bubbling in the pit of his stomach like the inevitable rush of an oncoming train. With only the vaguest thoughts in his head, he worked a hand between their writhing bodies to grip Shikamaru's as of yet neglected cock and pump it in time to his thrusts. Dimly, Neji remembered the difficulty Shikamaru had had in cumming last time and hoped that maybe the ghost would have an easier time of it this go around with the extra stimulation. Maybe if he-

Without any warning, Shikamaru shattered underneath Neji, his body stretching as taut as a bowstring as he spilled against both of their chests, the cool substance chilling his skin for only a few seconds before it, too, evaporated away. Hips stuttering to a shocked stop, Neji could only stare down in wonder at the overcome face of his lover as the clenching muscles around him drew him to his own orgasm, and he spilled deep inside the ghost.

When they both came down from their respective highs, panting and exhausted, Neji allowed himself to fall forward onto his side, the motion pulling himself out of Shikamaru's body. Both of them winced at the loss, but the relief from the overstimulation soon overshadowed it and Neji opened his arms to embrace the ghost as they instinctively curled together, Shikamaru laying his head down on Neji's chest as if listening to his heart slow down to a normal tempo.

When their breathing had relaxed to mostly normal speeds again, Neji brushed a thumb up Shikamaru's cheekbone. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"Not in the slightest," Shikamaru assured him, nosing against his collarbone. "It was… amazing."

Neji couldn't deny that sent a spark of masculine pride through his system, but it was also tinged with jealousy. "Better than you lover back when you were alive?"

Stiffening slightly at the mention of him, Shikamaru turned his cheek a little more inward so it was hard for Neji to read his expression. "Hoffstead and I… we never- I never let him… it was always me who was…"

He trailed off into silence, but the words that he had managed to get out before then were enough to cause Neji's eyes to widen. So he was the first person who had ever touched Shikamaru like that, the first person who had made him come apart at the seams and beg for more, harder, anything, even? The very thought was heady. He shifted his arms so that he was cuddling the ghost's body more solidly against his chest, an ironic action considering that his skin was starting to feel less and less substantial in his arms.

"Shikamaru? Is there something wrong?"

"No…" The ghost murmured against his collarbone, the almost-not-there breath tickling his skin. "'M just… really tired. The shadows and the teleportation and now this… I might have overstepped my boundaries just a smidge."

Leaning down, Neji pressed a kiss to the top of Shikamaru's head. "Then rest. We have all the time in the world, now."

"Mmm."

Neji couldn't see the ghost's mouth but he could hear the smile in his voice as he closed his eyes and allowed himself to become almost wholly insubstantial in Neji's arms. The misty sensation of the ghost against his chest was soothing, and Neji soon found his own eyes closing in the calmness of a sleepless rest.


	47. True Escape

Eventually, Shikamaru recovered enough to talk quietly with Neji as he allowed the rest of his energy to recharge. At first, they talked of everything and nothing, but as time went on, the topics got more serious.

During a brief lull in the conversation, Neji suddenly asked, "If Hinata had actually aimed to kill when she swung at you, would you have let her?"

"Hmm?" Shikamaru looked up from where he was leaning against Neji's chest. "Your little cousin? I wasn't worried about her at all. She couldn't have killed me except by accident; she doesn't have the constitution. I had to beat the will to kill into people like her back in…"

He trailed off and let the sentence hang unfinished in the air.

"What about me, then?" Neji pressed. "What if it had been me coming at you, and you would have had to fight back or I'd have killed you? What would you do?"

Shikamaru let his hand trail down Neji's stomach. "After I had taken off those chains, I probably would have fought you tooth and nail. But before… I don't know. I might have let you."

Neji's grip around Shikamaru's shoulders tightened. "But why?"

The ghost shrugged. "You'd made it very clear that you didn't want me in your life. I didn't believe you, of course, and now you see I was right all along, like I always am." At that, Neji gave his shoulder a playful push, and Shikamaru laughed, but his expression quickly turned somber again. "I knew my place there. I guess I thought… if I was wrong and you actually wanted me gone, then it was probably my place to stop bothering you, one way or another."

"Shikamaru!" Neji pushed the ghost's head back from his chest to glare at him. "You can't just say that!"

"Why? Because it's true?" Shikamaru sighed and rested his head back against Neji's chest again. "But it didn't come to that, Neji. For that, be grateful."

"But it could have-"

"But it _didn't_." Shikamaru closed his eyes again. "Please respect that I was willing to take that risk, Neji. Because I thought you were worth it."

Neji was quiet after that, afraid to ask anything else and risk upsetting the delicate balance of their quiet. After a while, Shikamaru let Neji know his body was recovered enough to move by sighing and pushing himself away from his chest.

"We should probably get going soon. We don't know how long it will take before they catch up to us."

"True." Contrary to his words, Neji folded his arms more securely around Shikamaru's chest. "It might take a few hours to deploy them, but we - I mean _they -_ " that was going to take some getting used to - "have trackers whose job is to trace auras of ghosts. You may have been able to throw them off a little with the teleportation, but it probably won't last for long."

"Hmm…" Shikamaru cocked his head to the side. "Should we split up, then?"

"No!" Neji sat bolt upright, dislodging the ghost from his perch on his chest. With an affronted air, Shikamaru sat up next to him on the bed. "I mean, no, please. I don't want to be separated from you… just in case. Do you think you can move?"

"Move, yes, teleport, no, not for another while yet." The ghost yawned and stretched, showing off the fading marks on his sides and neck. "What do we do now? Where should we go?"

Neji shivered, a tongue of cold making its way down his bare spine. "I don't care where, we just need to get out of this city. Not that they won't stop chasing us after we leave, but it will be much harder to track us down."

"Do you know what you need to do that?"

Tilting his head back, Neji considered it. "I'm not entirely sure. I know I need identification and I have my driver's license, but other than that I'm not sure. I do I even have the other forms of identification that normal people have? Do you know what they are?"

"Birth certificate and social security number?" Shikamaru asked with a frown. "That's what we needed when I was still alive. Don't know if it's changed since then, though."

"What the hell is a social security number?"

"Identification number. I think you need it in order to get a job that pays you legally. Something about paying more taxes, and then when you retire it give you money back."

"What the hell are taxes?"

Shikamaru's eyebrows crawled up his forehead. "I'm suddenly understanding why you were so unsure about this. You really don't know anything about how real society operates, do you?"

"I told you I didn't!" Neji suddenly had a thought. "Wait, I have a passport because I've gone to Canada before. Does that count?"

"A legal one?"

"I'm assuming so. I took a public flight there."

"Probably, then. I think you need your birth certificate to get one, so you probably have at least that."

"Why is this so hard?" Neji complained, flopping back down on the bed with a groan. "Why does the government want to know exactly who I am and where I am at all times and in seven different ways?"

"I'm sure you're not the only person who's ever asked that question."

Groaning again, Neji pushed himself up off the bed and staggered to his closet. "Whatever it is, I still have to get dressed before I figure it out. Do you know what normal people wear?"

"Just wear what you normally wear, but lose the suit jacket. And probably the tie on this occasion," Shikamaru called out from behind him on the bed. "...Or you could just walk around naked. That works too."

Neji turned around to see an appreciative gleam the ghost's eye as he checked him out. Unlike some of the other times Shikamaru had stared at his naked body, however, Neji felt no shame and he just rolled his eyes and turned back to his closet. "Fine. I should probably pack a few things, but not much, considering I'll have to carry it wherever we go from here. I should probably buy some new clothes actually, just so I don't stick out as much."

Shikamaru suddenly sat up. "Do you have cash?"

"No, just a card. But it's my money, my wages that I've been paid that I kept in an outside bank, so I should still be able to access it, right?"

"You could, but you probably shouldn't." The ghost frowned. "As far as I remember, cards can be traced, and from what you've told me of your family I wouldn't be surprised if they knew how to track them."

Neji dropped the pants he was trying to put on. "Son of a… what do I do then?"

"Maybe if you go to the back you have your account it, they'll let you withdraw most of it?" Shikamaru suggested. "Then you could pay cash for most things and no one would be able to trace it, at least until you get settled somewhere again and can open up a new account that your family won't know about."

Neji started shaking. "This is so much bigger than I thought it would be… I don't know if I can do it… Shikamaru, I can't-!"

"Neji." Shikamaru came up behind Neji and wrapped his arms around his middle. From the brush of spectral fabric against Neji's bare back, he could tell that the ghost had already conjured up his clothes again. "I know you said you wanted to come with me and I told you that you couldn't back out… but if you really think you can't do it, you can always-"

"No!" Neji broke out of the circle of Shikamaru's arms to turn and clasp him to his chest. "I said that I wanted to come with you, and I do. We can figure this out together."

"Together." Shikamaru gave him a small kiss of promise that soon held the potential to tip them back into the place they'd just come from, so Neji pulled away before they tipped over the precipice of no return again, though it took a lot of effort.

"We should make a list of all the things we need to get done before we get out of the city."

"Good plan."

As it turned out, the list of things they needed was shorter than Neji anticipated. There was the bank visit, a visit to a local branch of town office to find out the requirements to legally change his last name, an excursion to find out if Neji had a birth certificate and social security card and retrieve them if so - a mission that Neji had protested since it potentially involved breaking back into the Hyuuga compound but Shikamaru had insisted on - a shopping trip to find Neji less obvious clothes, and one more personal errand Neji insisted on being included on the list. During the process, Neji had remembered that he had a fire-safe box filled with important papers that the Council of Elders had entrusted to him after he had moved out of the compound in case he'd ever need them. Neji had never opened it because he'd never had any need of it, but maybe some of the papers they were looking for were in there.

Now that Neji had a plan, he was feeling much more confident about the whole process. A suitcase with nothing but a few extra pieces of clothing hung from one of his hands. It felt a little strange, to have only that as the entirety of his life. It felt so light. Closing his eyes briefly, he let his lungs inflate before he glanced around his apartment for the last time. It was somehow smaller than he had always thought it was, now that he was faced with leaving it behind.

"You ready to go?" Shikamaru murmured behind him.

Neji tightened his grip on the handle of his suitcase. "Ready as I'll ever be. Did you find anything in the box?"

"Yes, actually, two things I thought were interesting. A social security card, which is one of the things we wanted, and one other that I thought you'd like to see." He held out the document to Neji, who took it for examination.

It was a contract of some kind, that Neji could tell at a cursory glance. He skimmed the fine print at the top to see the two signatures at the bottom, above the third and fourth signatures of the witness, in this case the Lord Hyuuga, and the Attorney for Outside Law as the officiator. His heart clenched when he saw that the two signatures above the were Hinata's and his own.

Their betrothal contract, and the original, it looked like.

"Is that what I think it is?" Shikamaru asked, leaning over Neji's shoulder to look.

"Looks like it." Neji shook his head. "I didn't even know I had it… why would I have it? Why would they leave it with me?"

"Trying to prove they trust you, maybe?"

"Maybe…" Neji's hands unintentionally clenched, and he had to force himself to let go of the paper. When he did, he discovered that his fists had left lines in the otherwise crisp paper. "It doesn't matter. It was a mistake either way."

"What does that mean?"

"This."

Neji walked to his kitchen counter and laid down the contract, giving it a look like it had personally bitten him, which it might as well have. He ripped a big gash in the contract over his own signature and tore it out, leaving the entire contract behind shd except his name, then placed it on the counter and dropped his phone on top of it after turning it completely off. All the important numbers, the ones he would want to call again, were already memorized anyway. He considered smashing it as well, but he figured that this was enough of a message.

"What are you doing?"

"The phone has a tracker in it," Neji explained. "It's supposed to be only activated when someone sends a distress signal, but I wouldn't but it past them to have it on all the time. I'd feel safest leaving it behind. I can always get a new one."

"Does that mean you're ready to go now?"

Neji took a deep breath. "As ready as I'll ever be."

"Then let's go." Shikamaru floated ahead and went out through the door, leaving Neji alone inside his apartment. He took one last look around the place he had in turns called a prison, a sanctuary, a bed to sleep in, and finally a home, before heading out the door. Just to make sure he wasn't tempted to turn back, he left his set of keys to the door on the counter next to the mutilated betrothal contract and the phone.

* * *

The woman at the bank raised her eyebrows when Neji first gave his request.

"You want me to what?"

"Withdraw everything from my account and give it to me in cash," Neji repeated.

Her eyebrows crept up her forehead further. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

"Well, why not?"

"Do you want the IRS to come after you?"

Neji stared at her. "What's the IRS?"

Her jaw dropped. "The _Internal Revenue Service_? You know, who you pay taxes to?"

Neji really was going to have to figure out how these taxes things work. "Why would they be interested in me taking out my own money?"

"Because it's-! Okay, you obviously don't understand what's going on right now, so I'm going to be a good Samaritan and explain this to you before something bad happens to you. Pay attention."

Shikamaru snorted behind him. "And I think that's my cue to leave. I don't need a lesson in banking. I'll be right back, okay?"

He sank down into the floor before Neji could stop him, though it was probably a good thing that he couldn't considering how much stranger the looks the woman was giving him would be if he started yelling at what was, to her, thin air.

"Okay, so the Internal Revenue Service has banks flag all cash transactions of larger than ten thousand dollars because they want to crack down on money laundering and organized crime."

"Crime is _organized_?" Neji breathed in horror.

The woman stared at him for a moment. "How have you survived this long without learning any of this?"

A flush of embarrassment crested over Neji's cheekbones. "...I've lived a very sheltered life."

"Well, that's obvious." She shook her head. "Okay, the long of the short of it is you don't want to withdraw the entirety of your account unless you're planning on closing it."

"So close it for me!"

The woman frowned and typed on her keyboard for a few seconds, then bit her lower lip. "I'm afraid I can't do that."

"Well, why can't you?!" Neji growled, frustration starting to bleed into his voice.

"Because our bank policy requires a notification period of at least two weeks before closing an account." She typed a bit more, than a frown marred her face. "And your account is a sub-account of a organized section of accounts, and you personally can't close it without the larger corporation's approval."

Neji gritted his teeth. Of course the Elders would tie his hands, even on something like this. "How much money can I get out?"

"Legally? I'm required to give you all of it if you ask for it. But in my opinion? Don't take out more than ten thousand unless you want the government to come asking you questions."

Ten thousand. Neji didn't really have a very concrete idea of what money was worth, and Shikamaru hadn't been much help in that department either, considering the amount of inflation that had taken place since he last had to use it, but it sounded like a reasonable amount. All he knew was that it was a substantial fraction of what was in his account, but not all of it, and it seemed to him like enough to run away on.

"Fine. I'll take it."

The woman nodded. "I'll start the transaction. It might take a while to collect all the money because it had to be recounted by hand, so why don't you sign this paperwork and then wait in the corner while I do that for you?"

"Yes, I can do that. Thank you."

"Hey, don't get too excited. I am getting paid to do this."

The paperwork was alien and almost beyond Neji, and he soon realized the merits of the Attorney for Outside Law position to deal with all this. But he was a smart man and he figured it out eventually, but not before Shikamaru came back and surreptitiously slipped a piece of paper between the folds of his paperwork.

"What's that?" Neji muttered with as little lip movements as possible.

"Birth certificate."

His pen paused in the middle of signing his name. "How did you find that?"

"Do you really want to know?"

The pen clacked against the table as Neji laid it down. "Yes, of course I do."

"Alright." Shikamaru floated around in front of Neji and sat cross-legged in the air above the table he was signing his paperwork on. "I broke into the secure vaults of your family compound and dug through the files until I found yours, and then stole your birth certificate."

The paperwork in Neji's hand crumpled, and he had to force his fist to let it go and smooth out the surface back to its original pristine visage. "You did _what_?"

Shikamaru's eyes were dark. "I did something extremely dangerous that you definitely wouldn't approve of, but I understood the risk and decided that it was worth it."

Neji took a deep breath, then he shook his head and went back to his paperwork. "I'm just glad you made it back safe."

"You're not mad at me?"

"Of course I'm mad at you. I just don't think it's constructive to act on it right now."

The conversation was interrupted by the same woman who had helped Neji before. "Neji? Neji Hyuuga?"

The last name made Neji grit his teeth. That would have to be their next stop. "Here. I have the paperwork."

"Come here."

In an altercation that took far too long, Neji exchanged the paperwork for the inordinate amount of money that took up much more room in his suitcase than he had first anticipated. The woman was still shaking her head as he walked out the door of the bank, suitcase now full of more money than clothes.

"Where to next?" Shikamaru murmured from his floating stride behind Neji.

"Wherever I go to change my name."

It proved to be harder to find then Neji anticipated, particularly since he didn't have a phone to look up locations on GPS anymore. Even when he did find it, however, it wasn't a very fruitful visit considering that he learned that he needed a lot more documentation then he had access to, even with the birth certificate that Shikamaru had provided him. That problem, Neji finally decided, would have to be tabled until he found a place to settle in and could prove permanent residency, which was a pain, but would probably work better than trying to do it now.

After that was done, there was only two things left on the list before they could leave the city for good. The first was easy; they stopped in the first thrift store Neji found and he made his first purchase of a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweatshirt, with his newly withdrawn cash. The second was less so, and Neji had to ask Shikamaru for a moment alone in order to do it. The ghost agreed, but with suspiciously raised eyebrows.

* * *

"Moegi!"

Moegi turned around to see Neji jogging down the hallway towards her. She frowned; she wasn't exactly pleased to see him at the moment, not with all the stupid shit he'd pulled over the last few weeks. Folding her arms over her chest, she stuck out her chin as he approached.

"What do you want? If you think you can just come waltzing back in here like nothing happened after what you did, you've got another thing coming."

"I know." Neji stopped in front on her, and now Moegi noticed that he was wearing a pair of jeans and a navy t-shirt partially obscured by a zip-up sweatshirt that was zipped halfway up his chest. She frowned; outside of his concert attire, she didn't think she'd ever seen him wear anything other than a business suit, and certainly not jeans and a t-shirt. "But that's not why I'm here right now."

Moegi folded her arms across her chest. "Then why are you here?"

"First off, I wanted to apologize. I was under a lot of stress and I took it out on all of you, and that wasn't fair."

"You're right about that," Moegi snapped, but Neji raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

"Please. I'm not finished yet."

Arching an eyebrow, Moegi said, "By all means, continue then."

Neji held out a folder to her. "I wanted to give you this."

She regarded the folder suspiciously. "What is it?"

"Just take it. It's not going to hurt you."

Moegi cautiously took the folder from Neji's hands and flipped it open. Her frown only deepened when she saw that it was his music folder with all of his sheet music and notes from the gigs they'd played at. "But this is your music, Neji. Why are you giving it to me?"

But there was no answer to her question, and by the time Moegi looked up to see what his reaction was, he was already gone. Her frown deepening, she glanced back down to see that the piece of music that had been placed strategically on top of the pile was the song they had dubbed "The Duel". It's original title had been long scratched out and had first been replaced with "Neji's Song", followed by "the Duel", but now that had been crossed out as well and "Moegi's Song".

Moegi dropped the folder on the floor and ran to the end of the hallway. "Neji! Neji, come back! What's going on? Please talk to me! Neji!"

But Neji was already gone, disappeared into thin air. As Moegi slowly walked back to the fallen folder, she saw that the music had slid out to reveal a second song with a personal note. _Summertime_ lay on the floor with something written across the top, above the title.

 _Tell Konohamaru to look after Hinata for me._

"Neji!"

* * *

The wind whipped through Neji's newly purchased sweatshirt, and he raised his eyebrows at the ghost who had just teleported him to the top of a tall building in his haste to escape Moegi's presence before she could question him too much. With the amount of people standing around him, taking selfies and admiring the view, he was surprised that he'd managed to pop into existence without anyone noticing. "Where exactly are we?"

"Space Needle," Shikamaru said as he gazed around them distractedly, as if he was looking for something- or someone.

"And why are we on the top of the Space Needle, again?"

He floated upwards and stood on top of the railing. "You'll see."

Then he lifted off the top of the railing and raised both hands to his mouth. "Namaki! Nama-!"

A presence hit the small of Shikamaru's back and knocked him down, the two shooting down towards the ground like a pair of spectral meteors. Voices faintly drifted up to Neji as he flung himself to the edge of the railing, and he would have hung over the top of it if his way hadn't been barred by a mesh that reached up far past his head.

"Be quiet, shadow-brat! I thought I told you that you weren't to bother me anymore!"

"Well, hello to you too, Namaki."

"Are you trying to get me killed?! Stop drawing attention to me!"

"Relax; I'm just as keen to avoid attention now as you are."

"That doesn't make me feel any better!"

The two spirits untangled from each other and stood apart, then Shikamaru started to float gently upwards and the unfamiliar ghost followed him.

"I already told you, I won't give you the information you came here seeking. Why won't you give up already?"

"Oh, I don't need that anymore." Shikamaru ascended the last few feet so he was floated eye level with Neji. "I'm here as more as a courtesy this time. There's someone I think you should meet."

The ghost who had attacked Shikamaru followed him up with an annoyed expression on her face. "Who could be possibly important enough that you decided I had to meet them- Oh!"

Her gaze fell on Neji's face, and his own eyes widened in return as he recognized the shape of her eyes. "You…! You're…!" He gasped.

At the same time, she stumbled back, a hand clutching at her breast. "Shadow-brat! Do you stab me in the back like this? I thought I could trust you!"

He caught her arm before she could flee. "Take another look. He's the one I've been telling you about."

"The one-? Oh-! He's…" she took a closer look at him. "He's younger than I expected."

"Shikamaru, who is this?" Neji asked, panic starting to seep into his voice as he fought his gut reaction of jerking away from the Hyuuga ghost, the aberration of nature that should be allowed to exist by his family law.

"Namaki, meet Neji," Shikamaru said with no small measure of pride in his voice, folding his arms across his chest. "And Neji, meet Namaki. I think you'll find you have a lot in common."

Neji sized the ghost up with a critical eye, and found her doing the same to him. "Who are - or were - you?"

The Hyuuga ghost pointedly raised her chin into the air. "I was Namaki Hyuuga, First Lady to the Clan, wife of the Lord Hyuuga and mother of his two sons, until the Lord himself decided my ideas were too radical and raised an accusation against me to end in my execution. Now I am the hidden guardian of this place, bringing hope to the low ghosts the Hyuuga tyranny would unfairly destroy. Who, pray tell, do you claim to be?"

Neji's breath caught in his throat, and he had to swallow thickly before responding. "I am - or was - Neji Hyuuga, File Operator for Seattle, Partner of one of the most prestigious sons of Uchiha, grandson of the secondary branch of the line of Lord Hyuuga and foremost in the position to inherit the Title of Second Heir to the Lord Hyuuga Position over my cousin, the logical Heir. You are… you are my grandmother."

The Hyuuga ghost's eyes widened and she drew a few inches closer to Neji. "You are… Hizashi's son?"

"I am… or was," Neji corrected himself. "He's been dead for over twelve years. I was raised with my uncle Hiashi, and my younger cousin Hinata."

Tears filled the eyes of the Hyuuga ghost as she pressed a hand over her mouth. "My son is dead? How?"

"I don't know all the details," Neji admitted. "The Elders wouldn't tell me, but it had to do with a botched job. His Uchiha partner survived but never fully recovered."

The ghost blinked back the tears and reached out for Neji, who, despite his upbringing and the instincts ingrained into his body, found himself leaning into the touch. Her fingers brushed up against his cheekbone but passed through his skin instead of tracing the surface, and Neji had to remind himself that not all ghosts were like Shikamaru and could spoil him with corporeality all the time. He reached back for her, latting his own hand pass through her wrist.

"I always wanted grandchildren," she whispered half to herself, half to her spellbound audience. "I was always afraid my sons would never give me any, and then before either of them could ever marry I was… gone."

Neji swallowed thickly. "I never knew my mother and my aunt was always distant. She lives across the country now, unable to cope with the pressures of being the daughter in law to the Lord Hyuuga. I never… never had any maternal figures in my life. I always wanted to know who my grandmother was."

The Hyuuga ghost floated closer, her hands fluttering over Neji's shoulders. "Our clan doesn't give us much of an excuse for family, does it?"

The words brought prickling tears to Neji's eyes, and he had to wipe them away before he wrapped his arms around the insubstantial form of his grandmother. "I guess you're right."

She settled against his chest like a soft mist, the only signs of her presence that he could feel against his skin the unearthly chill of her spirit form, and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Neji. My grandson. I never thought I'd say those words."

Neji squeezed tighter, though her form was no less insubstantial in his arms. "Is that why you stayed behind?"

"Perhaps it's a part of it." The Hyuuga ghost drew back with a smile, though she kept her hands in contact with Neji's shoulders, and Neji was reluctant to let her go but he had no choice, seeing as she could just move out of the circle of his arms by floating through his flesh. "But it's likely not the whole reason, or I'd be disappearing already, wouldn't I?"

"Why, then? It is forbidden for a Hyuuga to remain on earth after death."

Her smile turned bitter. "Because I want to get back at those fools who think they can control every life they view as their own to their own benefit. If I was cast away because my use was outweighed by the risks they saw in me, then I would embody those risks wholeheartedly." Her smile softened. "I am only glad the same fate did not befall you… though I suppose the credit for that must be given to your spectral friend the shadow-brat."

"Thank you, Namaki. Your words are altogether too kind," Shikamaru said, inclining his head, and Neji jumped to hear him speak. He'd almost forgotten the ghost was there.

"Nevertheless, you did save him, and you are owed what thanks you are given for that." She turned and clasped Shikamaru's forearm in thanks, and Neji had to remind himself not to be jealous that the ghost could touch her and he could not.

Stepping back out into the thin air beyond the railing, the Hyuuga ghost turned back to Neji. "Would you like to know why the existence of a Hyuuga spirit is forbidden?"

Unconsciously, Neji leaned further over the railing. "Yes, I want to know."

"It has to do with what it does to our Byakugan. Watch closely." She closed her eyes and drew the power from around her body until it settled around her closed eyes with a visible tint of blue light. Taking a deep breath and raising both arms into the air, she whispered, "Byakugan."

Instantly her body exploded with a light so bright Neji had to shield his eyes, and he even saw some of the people close by taken by surprise at what, to them, must be an unexpected patch of sun shining through clouds with no visible breaks in them. The Hyuuga ghost opened her eyes, showing Neji the glowing orbs contained within, pure white and shining with a holy light that hurt to look at.

"This is the true form of the our power, a secret known only to the few Hyuuga privy to the information and those of us who have escaped their grasp," the Hyuuga ghost said, and her voice echoed into the still air as if a hundred people were reciting the same words in tandem from inside her body. "When the first human beheld a ghost, this was the lense he viewed them through. Through the evolution of our family the gift has changed and weakened until it became the two versions we see today in the Byakugan and the Sharingan, but after death it reverts to how it once was. This power gives the wielder absolute power over the divide between the physical manifestation of the body and the spirit, and not only in themselves but in others as well, both alive and dead."

Neji's breath drew in on a gasp. "Reanimation…"

"Precisely." Closing her eyes once more, the Hyuuga ghost let her power fade, and when the light around her body faded it left her looking older and more tired than before. "But even that is a limited sense of what it can do. Removing a spirit from a living body, instating a dead one into a dead or living body, even switching the spirits between two living bodies; all this is possible, and has terrible consequences. That is why the existence of a Hyuuga ghost is forbidden. Now that you know, you must never let it happen to you. It is too easy to make mistakes, too easy to become overwhelmed by your own greed."

Neji's mouth went dry, and he nodded. "I will."

"Good." She drew back further. "It might be best for you to flee this place for the time being, just in case any live members of our family unsympathetic to you decide to investigate. I myself will be moving away, as well."

"Wait!" Neji reached out for her, irrational in his desperation. He knew he needed to leave and had been ready for it before this last visit, but now that he had come face to face with the ghost of his grandmother, he couldn't bring himself to want to leave her so quickly. "But… I just found you…"

"Ah, Neji…" The Hyuuga ghost reached out one last time and let spectral fingers ghost through the skin of his cheek. "I am glad I was able to meet you. But you must live your life now." Her eyes flickered up to glance briefly at Shikamaru. "In whatever way you wish it."

Shikamaru laid a hand on the small of Neji's back, and his palm, unlike the Hyuuga ghost's, was solid. "Neji. It's time to go."

With a tiny nod, Neji allowed himself to be drawn backwards into the shadows. The last thing he saw before they crawled up over his vision was the peaceful face of the grandmother he never knew he had, looking so young and unlike any Elder he'd ever had the dubious pleasure to know. She smiled at him as she turned away and dissolved into the clouds and the oncoming shadows.

* * *

They were outside of the airport when Neji blinked again, hidden in the shadows of an overlooked cranney in the parking garage.

"You wanted to get out of here," Shikamaru supplied before Neji could ask. "I could always teleport you, but I can only teleport to places I've already been and only in short distances carrying as much mass as you and your bag. A plane is your best bet."

Neji nodded. "Can you ride with me?"

"I could try, but unfortunately I don't think it would work. Without some way to anchor myself, I don't think I could focus on moving fast enough at that height for that long. It would be easiest if I either followed the plane on the ground, or you told me where it was going to land and I met you there."

A nervous fervor caused Neji's hand to tighten like a vice around Shikamaru's arm. He couldn't bear the thought of parting from him for so long so soon after their reunion. "But- what if something happens and I end up going someplace else? What if I get lost? What if you get captured by a separate branch of Hyuuga? What if-?"

"Neji." Shikamaru shut him up with a brief kiss, which had the effect of disconnecting Neji's brain from his mouth long enough for the ghost to make his point. "I found you once, didn't I? Please trust that I can do it again."

Still dumb from the unexpected kiss, Neji could only nod dumbly. Shikamaru gave him a encouraging pat on the rump.

"Now go in there and get yourself a ticket out of here."

Neji gave one more nod as he closed his eyes and steeled himself. He could do this. He was free; he could take responsibility of his own freedom.

Popping his eyes open with a confident fire smouldering in their depths, Neji marched inside the airport and up to the ticket counter in the airport and slammed his hands down on the desk, startling the woman who was falling asleep behind the counter.

"I want a ticket on the next flight out of here!"

The woman jumped into wakefulness and glared at Neji before tapping on her computer screen.

"Anywhere in particular where you'd like to go?" The woman asked in a bored, practiced tone.

"Anywhere. I just need to get out of this city."

The woman looked up sharply at his words. "Ma'am, if you're having a problem, I can direct you to local resources instead of running away-"

"First off, I am a man," Neji bit out as Shikamaru laughed behind him, resisting the urge to glare over his shoulder at the ghost who was invisible to everyone else but him. "And secondly, I do not need help. I just need a plane ticket, preferably one that gets me out of here before tomorrow morning. What is the next flight that leaves this airport?"

The woman's eyebrows crept up her forehead as she looked Neji up and down, then she sighed and went back to her computer screen. "Fine. We have two flights going out between now and six am tomorrow morning. The first one leaves in forty-five minutes, so it's not likely you'll make it through security even if you rush. The second leaves in three hours and is a direct flight to Denver, Colorado. I can book you for a seat on that one if you'd like."

"Where does the first flight go?" Neji interrupted her before she could select the second one on her screen.

Annoyance briefly took over her features before she schooled her expression back into professional mode. "It's a direct to New Orleans."

"I'll take that one."

The woman gave him a look that clearly said she wasn't getting paid enough to deal with this level of shit before sighing and tapping in the screen. "Fine. Can I see some ID please?"

Right, that was something people asked to see a lot in the world outside the Hyuuga compound. Neji would have to get used to that. He fished the driver's license out of his wallet and handed it to the woman, who barely gave it a glance before she tapped something into the machine.

"That will be seven hundred and fifty-five dollars. Will that be credit, debit, or check today?"

After a brief hesitation, Neji asked, "Actually, can I pay in cash?"

The woman looked up sharply. "You want to pay in cash for an eight hundred dollar flight?"

Neji hesitated. "Will that be a problem?"

"Will that be a problem, he asks," the woman muttered to herself as she stabbed her touch screen with more violence than was perhaps called for. "No, it's fine," she said out loud, then lowered her voice again. "Paying cash for a flight, for crying out loud. Jesus, he must be loaded. Fucking rich people are bonkers."

In ten minutes, Neji had made the exchange of the cash for the ticket and was halfway through the security line when a hand came down on his shoulder.

"Excuse me, but there's a problem with your ID."

Neji turned around to see the rather young security guard who had detained him. He frowned; he hoped he hadn't made a mistake and given the wrong card to them. That would be just his luck, not having enough experience dealing with these kinds of things because the Hyuuga family had always arranged everything for him.

"What seems to be the problem?"

"Well, ma'am, it appears you've given us the wrong card. The identification you've provided is for a man, not a woman."

Neji bristled. "I am a man, god damn it!"

"Oh!" The security guard looked surprised. "...You are… transgender?"

"No, I am not transgender, I am a man," Neji snapped. "I was born a man and I am a man, I just happen to have long hair! Why is this so difficult for people to understand? This is the second time today that it's happened!"

Now the security guard looked royally confused and a little embarrassed, but he foraged on. "Oh, I'm sorry… sir. But will you please step aside so we may perform a random secondary screening on you?"

"Random my ass," Neji muttered under his breath as he was lead to the side, but he knew better than to protest the action and bring even more attention to himself. The secondary screening wasn't even that difficult, just a non-invasive pat-down that lasted fifteen seconds and a second body scan that was more of an x-ray than the plain metal detector everyone else had to go through. He was also slightly mollified that a few more people were pulled aside for secondary screening while he was standing there without his shoes on, about one in every twenty-five people, though he was still annoyed that he had been selected for the "random" screening by a less than random reason.

By the time Neji got through security, he was almost late for his flight, but he managed to board the plane just a few minutes before the doors closed and sit down in the seat marked on his ticket as the flight attendants were making their final rounds. Shikamaru had followed him all the while, and now the ghost hovered in the middle of the seat before him with a conflicted expression.

"So you have a destination in mind now? We could go anywhere, you know; Mexico, Europe, Asia. No one could touch us there."

A brief glance to the side told Neji that his nearest companion had already put headphones in and fallen asleep against the open window, so he chanced to speak in a low voice.

"I think… I'd like to stay in America. At least, for a little while."

Shikamaru nodded. "Fair enough. We should probably figure out how to travel better together first. Is this our final stop or just the first leg of the journey?"

Neji shook his head, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "I think I'd like to stay where we land, at least for a little while. I need to figure out a skill of mine that I can market, and I think New Orleans might be a place where I can do just that."

"New Orleans?" The ghost's nose wrinkled a little. "What's in New Orleans?"

"What's in New Orleans?" Neji repeated with a twinkle in his eye. "Why, only one of the richest histories of jazz music in the country, that's what."

Understanding lit up the ghost's face. "Ah! So that's your so-called 'marketable skill', then?"

"You can bet on that." Neji settled down further into his seat and closed his eyes. "And I'm going to love every minute of it."


	48. Heir

And here it is, folks, the last official chapter of White Moves First! It's been a wild ride, huh? Tell me if you enjoyed it or not!

Stay tuned for the last post on this story tomorrow, the two-part epilogue that will hopefully answer all those questions of yours that have been raised through your reviews!

* * *

Konohamaru rubbed Hinata's shoulder as she sat hunched over the porcelain throne in what had become her pre-concert ritual. "Better now?"

Taking a shaky breath, Hinata leaned back against his chest. "M-much, thank you."

"You ready to sing?"

"As I'll ever b-be." She pushed herself to her feet with a little help from Konohamaru. "D-don't worry about me and go s-set your trumpet. I'll be f-fine. M-meet you backstage in f-five?"

By now, Konohamaru was used to Hinata's habit of vomiting from nerves in the bathroom before she sang in front of an audience, so he just nodded and pushed open the door. "Take good care of yourself."

"I w-will."

After Konohamaru had disappeared through the door, Hinata turned towards the mirror and regarded her reflection. She was pale and her skin held the tell-tale shimmer of sweat, but she pulled a small bag on makeup from her purse and popped it open to reveal the few items Moegi had lent her for cases such as these. The luxuries were forbidden in the Hyuuga family, but outside there was no one to know. She used a little bit of blush to cover up her pallor before using a few of the sticks she still didn't know the name of to draw around her eyes like Moegi had taught her, giving her face a more mysterious appearance and hiding most of the signs of her previous sickness. When she was done, Hinata surveyed her reflection in the mirror again, taking note with pride how she much she had improved in this skill over the last few concerts she had sung in.

The jazz orchestra - or mainly Konohamaru - had reached out to ask for her to sing with them again after… no, that name was still to painful to think. After _he_ quit. She'd accepted, not knowing how to turn them down, but now she was glad she had. She was beginning to see the appeal _he_ had found in living a double life. The liberation of the swinging jazz was so different from the stiffness of the Hyuuga court that she begun to crave it in moments where she found herself choked by their regulations. Despite her ritual of vomiting before every performance, which she didn't think she'd ever break, now Hinata wasn't sure that she'd ever be able to give it up, even if ordered to by the Lord Hyuuga himself.

Taking a deep breath, Hinata smiled at herself in the mirror, and found that her smile was not at all forced, but completely genuine. It was time for her to sing.

* * *

"Great job, as usual, Hinata!"

Hinata blushed under the praise and bowed her head slightly to hide how happy the few simple words made her. "Th-thank you, Kurenai. I know it wasn't that good, but thank you for praise nonetheless. I promise I'll do better next time."

"Don't sell yourself short, kid." Kurenai's arm dropped around her shoulders. "Everyone makes a mistake or two; the important part is to never let the audience know you flubbed your part. You kept going, and that's the mark of a professional. I'd be happy to play behind you any day."

"Th-thank you," Hinata managed again, her face the approximate shade of a tomato.

When she got back to the room where everyone was putting away their instruments, Hinata was promptly swamped by her friends, who told her almost exactly the same thing. She blushed under their praise and let them carry on as they pleased, occasionally putting in her own remarks about their own playing. Konohamaru's eyes especially lit up when she complimented them using some of the lingo they had taught her, giving her an extra strong squeeze that she melted into.

Hinata could only suppose that she was blessed by the fact that Konohamaru had largely accepted what had happened without asking any questions as if he knew she couldn't answer them even if she had wanted to, and their relationship had gone back to almost the way it had been before. After _he_ had left with _that thing_ , Hinata had been a sobbing broken mess, and not knowing where else to turn with the Hyuuga aversion to weakness, she had looked outside of her family for comfort and ended up in Konohamaru's lap sobbing her eyes out for the better part of three hours one afternoon. She was unable to tell him the entirety of what had happened, but he understood enough that he just gave her what she needed and allowed her to keep whatever secrets she wanted until she was ready to share them with him, though Hinata could tell that he had been curious.

Not that she ever would be able to tell him what happened without breaking practically every secrecy law her family had, but that was another matter.

"Hinata?"

Hinata broke from Konohamaru's embrace to see who had called her name. "Y-yes?"

It was one of the band members she wasn't too familiar with, a dark-skinned woman who played the clarinet ad cobbled together parts from trumpet music when they weren't available. "There's someone here asking for you."

"Wh-who-" Hinata started, then her lungs froze as her grandfather stepped into the room behind the woman.

"Hinata." His stature looked out of place, but his words stood resolute. "I'd like a work with you, please?"

Hinata started shaking. Konohamaru noticed and placed a hand on her shoulder, but Hinata pulled away from it; she didn't want him to experience any backlash from what might be about to happen to her. "H-here?"

His gaze roved around the room, taking in all the people who had stopped their side conversations and were now watching them with interest. "Perhaps somewhere a little more… private."

The previous side conversations now exploded into full on suspicious mutters, but with good reason. The last time someone from her family had asked to speak to her in private after a performance, he had punched Konohamaru in the jaw and she had come back in tears, swearing that she wasn't going to sing with them again.

But what choice did Hinata have? This was, after all, the Lord Hyuuga. She nodded.

"There's a r-room. I'll sh-show you."

The room quieted as Hinata led her grandfather out the door, but exploded into speculate whispers loud enough to be heard through the door as soon as she closed it behind them.

"Wh-why have you made such a journey to this place? It is n-not often you l-leave the C-Compound." She whispered, afraid to look him in the eye for fear of what she might see there. Would he punish her for daring to do the things she had done- for daring to find something outside of the family she could feel good about working towards? Would he forbid her from singing with the group ever again? From even seeing her friends again?

"I've come to apologize for my behavior."

Hinata's head jerked up in surprise; of all the things he could have said, this was the one she was least expecting. The Elder, the Lord Hyuuga, apologizing? "P-pardon?"

With a sigh, the Elder pulled out a chair from a nearby table and settled his old body down into it, joints creaking like a sign of his weary metal weakness. "I want to apologize to you. I handled the situation of your and Neji's betrothal very poorly; I see that now. I had my own goals, and I forced the issue in the face of Neji's, and even Merriam's, better judgment. And now he's gone, and we've all lost a member of our family… you most of all."

Tears pricked at the back of Hinata's eyelids, but she refused to let them out in front of her grandfather. "I d-don't… don't understand…"

He met her gaze in surprise. "So Neji didn't tell you. I wasn't sure, with how coldly you treated him at the announcement. What was your fight with him, then?"

Flushing, Hinata ducked her head. "His wr-wraith…"

The chair creaked as her grandfather leaned forward. "You mean, you knew about that?"

"No!" Hinata hastily shook her head, then she bit her lower lips. "At l-least, n-not that he was a wraith. Not for a l-long t-time."

"I see." An unreadable expression descended over her grandfather's face. "Then perhaps it will be easiest if I just show you then?"

 _Show me what_? Hinata wanted to ask, but the words died on her lips as she saw him pull a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and hold it out for her to take. With shaking hands, Hinata took the paper and unfolded it to read what it said.

 _I, Hinata Hyuuga, do hereby relinquish my birthright as Heir to the Position of Lord Hyuuga and bequeath it to my fiance, Neji Hyuuga. By signing this document, I pledge to give up any and all claims to the Position of Lord Hyuuga in the Present or Future. I pledge that I shall never endeavour to reclaim the right to the Title of Heir to the Position, nor shall I endeavor to obstruct Neji in his duties as Heir to the Position for any reason._

 _Signed,_

And then there was a blank spot where it was obvious she was to sign it. Underneath that was a second contract much like the first, except with Neji's name on it.

 _I, Neji Hyuuga, do hereby accept the Title of Heir to the Position of Lord Hyuuga from my fiancee, Hinata Hyuuga. By signing this document, I pledge that I shall do my utmost to uphold the values and responsibilities of the Position the same as any noble Hyuuga with the right to the Title of Heir to the Position by birth. I pledge that I shall never endeavour to return the Title of Heir to the Position to Hinata, nor shirk my duties as Heir to the Position for any reason._

 _Signed,_

Hinata felt a thrill of shock go down her spine as she lowered the document and made eye contact with her grandfather once more. She had no idea that they could even do this! To be honest, she'd only had a dim realization that she'd been in the position to become the Second Heir to the Position of Lord Hyuuga, because every time she thought about it her mind would instinctively shy away, so she'd been ignoring it her whole life. The realization left her feeling childish; while she had been focused on her fight with Neji over things like petty jealousy, he'd been faced with a multitude of moral dilemmas like this one. Moral dilemmas that he'd ultimately shielded her from, as he always did.

Apparently her face betrayed her shock, for her grandfather took the contract back with a small chuckle. "And by that, I gather that he did not tell you any of this."

Hinata could only nod wordlessly, suddenly afraid. If this was his plan before, what would happen now? Would he still force her to sign the contract, only striking Neji's name out and replacing it with whomever they next decided should be her husband? The thought left her feeling sicker than she had felt when she'd vomited earlier before the concert that evening. She didn't want to marry anyone now, least of all a stranger who the Elders had hastily picked to fill the void Neji's disappearance had left behind.

"As you're probably guessing, Neji leaving has left us in a bit of a bind," her grandfather continued as if he could read her mind. "My original intent was to have both of you sign the contract immediately following the betrothal announcement, but that plan was foiled for obvious reasons. The Council is at a stalemate, half of them wanting to find a new fiance for you as soon as possible to prove that Neji's disappearance wasn't because you were an undesirable future wife, the other half wanting to wait because they think replacing Neji too quickly will send a message to the rest of the clan the Title of Second Heir to my position is arbitrary and that we don't care who fulfills it, and they're willing to filibuster as long as it takes to achieve that goal."

So they were planning on replacing Neji's name in the contract with someone else's, they were just arguing over how long they should wait before doing it. Hinata couldn't help but feel a twinge of loss in her breast; despite the fact that the prospect of being an official Heir to the Position of Lord Hyuuga terrified her, it was still her birthright and she was bitter that she didn't have some kind of say in it.

"Yes, G-Grandfather. I understand."

"Hold on." Her grandfather held up a hand, and there was a strange twinkle in his eye. "You didn't let me finish. Now, I want you to know how long this plan has been in the works. I wrote up the first draft of this contract almost exactly ten years ago. Do you know what that means?"

"My f-first botched First B-Blood Trial," Hinata murmured.

"Precisely. At that time, I was sure you would never possess the qualities needed to take over the Position of Lord Hyuuga."

Hinata held her breath. She was almost positive that she felt a _but_ coming.

"But," he continued with something much lighter in his eyes, "That weak girl who prompted me to write this contract surprised me the other day. I almost didn't recognize her. She is someone who I would never hand this Position down to; the girl who refused to let me hurt her cousin even while I holding a loaded gun is one I would be happy to leave it under the care of. Even here, tonight, I saw how you did what you felt was right despite your fears, and that is commendable."

For a moment, only one thing from her grandfather's speech stuck in Hinata's head, and she blurted out, "You watched me sing?" Then everything else he had said sunk in, and she clapped a hand over her mouth as her eyes widened in shock.

Laughing, her grandfather got to his feet with no small measure of difficulty. "Yes, I watched you sing. You performed well, Hinata, and not just with the music. Tell me what you think of my proposition. Would you like to be named my Second Heir?"

Hinata's gut response was something more akin to a _Hell, no!_ but she held it in as she considered. After everything that had happened these past few weeks, she was sick of being at the mercy of other people's morals, and a tiny seed in some forgotten corner of her heart yearned for her own autonomy, despite the terror that same prospect instilled in her.

Squaring her shoulder, Hinata looked her grandfather in the eye. "Yes. Yes, I want to be your Heir."

Was that a flash of satisfaction that darted through her grandfather's eyes? Hinata couldn't tell, but he soon smiled and nodded, then held the contract out between them both and tore it in half, then in half twice more before letting the scraps of paper flutter to the ground.

"Then do your best to convince the rest of the Council of that plan before their next vote, which will be in five days." He paused, then clapped her on the shoulder with a lingering smile. "You already have my vote."


	49. Epilogue

A few days late but here's the epilogue! And here mars the official end of White Moves First! Hope you enjoyed!

Addi

* * *

Epilogue: Ten Months Later

Neji couldn't wipe the stupidly happy grin off his face when he made his way out the front door of the building to where Shikamaru was waiting for him, leaning up against the corner of the brick building opposite.

"I take it by the ridiculous expression on your face that were finally successful?"

"It only took my thirty-seven tries. Apparently 'childhood emotional trauma' isn't a good enough excuse to change a name if you don't press charges against your family for abuse," Neji said with a shake of his head, but even the thought of his past failures wasn't enough to discourage the smile to drop from his face. "But it's done now! The government has officially cleared my name change, and I am no longer Neji Hyuuga."

"Congratulations." Shikamaru's eyes twinkled. "And what, pray tell, did you change your last name to?"

Biting his lip, Neji ventured, "You won't be mad, right?"

"Why would I be mad?"

"I changed it… to Nara," Neji admitted.

Shikamaru gave a single steady blink. "Neji… you know that's my last name, right?"

"Yeah, that's why I picked it." He cautiously met the ghost's eyes. "Are you upset?"

"Upset?" Shikamaru stared at him impassively for a few moments longer, then his face lit up in a grin. "How could I be upset! This is… this is… I don't even know how to describe it!"

Well, Neji supposed that he could be proud of the fact that he had made Shikamaru Nara, war hero and tactical genius, speechless. "You're happy?"

"Happy?! Happy doesn't even begin to cover it! Neji, I…" he trailed off, then leaned forward and kissed Neji right in the middle of the busy street to share with his body the emotions his words weren't strong enough to convey. "I love you."

"And I love you," Neji replied quietly against Shikamaru's lips, desperate to reach out and pull his ghostly lover into an embrace but desisting because of the strange looks it would garner him, even stranger than the looks he was already getting from talking to thin air- though he had long since learned the trick of walking around with one earbud in so people would think he was talking into a hands-free device instead of to an imaginary companion.

Sometimes he surprised himself with how easy those words came now. The pressure of Shikamaru's mouth dissipated as he pulled back, wisping away into strands of ethereal insubstance, and Neji smiled at his happy visage. They had finally done it, together. Escaped to New Orleans and made a life for themselves there. Now that Neji had changed his name, his last ties to the Hyuuga family was gone and he was finally his own person. Giddily, he skipped a step as he made his way along the sidewalk back to the apartment he was paying a share of the rent of with two other young men trying to break into the jazz scene and his own personal room that it contained. He'd been lucky to find them so soon after landing in the city, and lucky that he'd had the money to pay for his first few months in advance before finding semi-solid work.

"So what do we do now?" He asked in a dizzying swirl of disbelieving merriment. "Now that I finally got my name settled, we could travel- where should we go? Out of the country?"

"Anywhere is fine so long as I can stay with you," Shikamaru answered, and the bare honesty in his tone drew Neji to an abrupt stop, warming his heart. The ghost stopped when he paused in the middle of the sidewalk, watching his face.

"Is there anywhere you want to go that I can come with you, then?"

After a few seconds of thought, the ghost suggested, "I think I'd like to go back to Konoha some day, just to see how everyone is doing."

"I think I can make that happen." Neji started walking again, a healthy spring in his step. "Maybe not soon, but I swear we'll get back there someday."

"I can live with that." Shikamaru resumed floating after him.

Soon, the pair reached the front door of the apartment building that the apartment Neji was renting with his two roommates, stopping their conversation so Neji could concentrate on his surroundings. Keying into the building and then into his own apartment, he was met with the hard faces of both his roommates sitting at their meager kitchen table, a sight that was rare considering both the hour - just before noon, and the life they lead often caused them to stay up all hours of the night for work and sleep well into the afternoon - and their inherent disinterest in each other, tough it never went so far as to border on dislike. Neji couldn't help but feel joyful as he took his jacket off and hung it up on a hook near the door.

"They finally accepted it, boys, can you believe it? After all these months of trying the court finally approved my name change! You are now looking at the newly christened Mr. Neji Nara!"

Their faces showed no sign of lightning, and Neji felt his smile slip off his own face. "What's wrong? Why do you look like that?" A bold of terror zipped through him. "We're not being evicted, are we?!"

It was a threat that had been levied against them in the past, for all sorts of reasons from monetary to noise complaints, but never carried out. However, Neji still remembered the sharp fear he had felt first few nights when he hadn't had a place to sleep and had been forced to sit in a dingy all-night diner to stay awake or lay his head down on a public park bench, so the threat was keenly felt.

The taller of his roommates, a young man by the name of Kankuro, stood up and offered his seat to Neji. "No, nothing like that. We just wanted to talk to you. Won't you have a seat?"

Alarm bells started ringing in Neji's head. Had they started to suspect Shikamaru's presence, though both of them had been careful to avoid detection since Neji moved it? "I'd rather stand, if that's alright with you. What do you want to talk about?"

Kankuro exchanged a glance with their other roommate, a man of little words name Yuura, before moving toward Neji. "Neji, we want you know that even though you've only been living with us for a little over half a year, both Yuura and I care about you as a friend. We don't want to see you make the wrong choices."

Neji frowned; they weren't making any sense. "In conjecture to what?"

Now Yuura spoke up. "You don't have to hide it anymore, Neji. We found your supply, and we want you to know that we're here to help you in any way we can."

"My supply of _what_?" Neji demanded, exasperated.

"This." Yuura produced a mason jar of a white power and placed it on the table. "Don't bother lying to us, Neji; we found it in your room. I know it seems hard now, but this isn't the answer to life's problems. Kankuro here can say that from experience."

"He's right," Kankura chimed in from behind Neji, having slipped between him and the door as if afraid Neji would make a run for it like a wild animal. "It seems impossible to give it up and it seems like everyone takes it, but you've come too far as a musician to succumb now. It might be hard, but you can be clean again. I did it, and you can do it too."

"I honestly have no idea what you guys are talking about right now," Neji said, unsure if he should be worried or amused by the situation. Apparently Shikamaru's vote was amused because the ghost started cracking up as if he'd just picked up on some joke Neji wasn't yet privy too.

"The _cocaine_ , Neji!" Yuura nearly shouted in exasperation. "This is an Intervention!"

"An Inter-? You think that's-? Oh my God." Neji couldn't help it: he started to laugh uncontrollably, doubling over to clutch his stomach as he wiped tears out of his eyes.

"You think this is a joke?" Kankuro seized Neji by his shoulder and dragged him upwards again. "We're being serious here, Neji! This could impact the rest of your life!"

"I know you are, it's just-" He broke off in another bout of uncontrollable laughter before he managed to choke out, "It's not _cocaine_ , it's _salt_!"

Both of them froze.

"Salt?" Yuura asked suspiciously.

"Salt," Neji confirmed, finally managing to straighten up under his own power. "Finely ground rock salt, to be precise. Try it."

Yuura cast a quick, unsure glance at Kankuro before unscrewing the lid of the mason jar and dipping his finger into the white powder contained within. Casting one last suspicious glance at Neji, he pressed the tiniest area of his tongue to his finger as was possible, then his eyes widened.

"It is salt!"

Neji had to hide a smile as they both let out twin groans of mixed relief and embarrassment. Sinking back down into the chair he had vacated, Kankuro passed a hand over his eyes.

"I can't believe we got that worked up over a jar full of salt," he groaned. "Why do you even have this thing, Neji?"

The truth was it was a habit ingrained into Neji by his family that he hadn't he managed to rid himself of, but of all the habits he still retained from that time it was one of the least harmful, so he didn't mind it. Neji wasn't about to tell them that though, so he just shrugged. "I'm a superstitious person by nature. Sometimes I like to throw it over my shoulder for good luck."

The first and only time he had actually done that, he had accidentally caught Shikamaru in the face with it and given him a rash, and the ghost had been so mad that he wouldn't have sex with him for two weeks.

"But that doesn't make sense!" Yuura protested. "We had other clues, too- the way you've been hiding in your room recently, the way you wanted to change your name, those weird noises we hear from your room some nights!"

"Yeah!" Kankuro suddenly sat bolt upright and glared at Neji. "You thrash all around and you moan and groan like you're in pain, and there's never anyone else in your room so we know you're not getting laid! It sounds like you're tripping so hard you're hallucinating! Explain that!"

This time, a flush found Neji's cheeks. How was he supposed to tell his roommates that he actually was getting laid, but by a ghost? His upbringing would normally turn him away from admitting such things, but the walls in their apartment were thin and Neji had long since learned not to be shy about the partners that his roommates sometimes brought home for more intimate relations.

"Why not tell them the truth?" Shikamaru suggested.

"Are you crazy?!" Neji instinctively hissed with little thought for the occupants of the room.

"No we are not crazy, we know there's something going, so you might as well just tell us!" Kankuro snapped, folding his arms over his chest angrily.

"You heard the man," Shikamaru supplied with a jerk of his chin. "Tell them. I'll help you in whatever way they need convincing."

Neji's shoulders sagged. "You've been planning this for a while, haven't you?"

"I would say so!" Yuura said in exasperation. "Just tell us what's going on with you, Neji! Whatever it is, it can't be any worse than what we first suspected."

But Neji's gaze was focused on Shikamaru, who only shrugged. "Maybe. I don't want to be your secret anymore, Neji. If you're going to carry my last name, you should at least give me that much. Besides, what's there to hold you back anymore? You no longer have to keep the secrets mandated by your family."

"Okay," Neji finally said, then turned to hi two roommates. "Are you sure you want to know the truth?"

"We wouldn't be asking you otherwise," Kankuro hedged.

"And you swear to believe me, no matter how crazy this sounds?"

Yuura gave him a funny look. "Why?"

"Just swear," Neji insisted.

Kankuro slammed his hands down on the table. "Fine we swear, just tell us already!"

"Fine." Neji took a deep breath and stepped to the side to show where Shikamaru was standing, even if they couldn't see him. "I'd like for the two of you to meet my boyfriend, Shikamaru."

After a beat of stunned silence, Kankuro ventured, "Like, you'd like for us to meet him eventually or you'd like for us to meet him now, because I hate to break it to you but there's no one there."

"I got it!" Yuura snapped his fingers. "You have an imaginary boyfriend!"

"No, I-" Neji shook his head to cut himself off; he probably could have worded that better. "I mean, he's here now. He's a ghost."

Now Kankuro slowly nodded his head up and down. "So you have a pretend ghost boyfriend. Okay, well, this comes as a bit of a surprise. I can't say I ever pegged you as the type to have flights of fancy like this - or a boyfriend, wow, I did not think that you were gay - but we respect that, Neji. If this is what makes you happy-"

"Shikamaru, would you mind getting me a glass of water?" Neji interrupted tersely.

WIth a snap of his fingers, Shikamaru opened the door of the cabinet over the sink with a bang and got out a class, then turned on the faucet, filled the glass, and levitated it over to Neji as he turned the faucet off. Neji took a sip of the water in front of his open-mouthed roommates.

"Let's try this again, shall we? I would like you to meet my boyfriend, Shikamaru. He's a ghost."

* * *

"...And that concludes my report on the study I have exhaustively conducted over the last six months on the effects of non-Hyuuga blood on the strength of the Byakugan over subsequent generations of Hyuuga and my proposition to reform the arranged marriage policy, as my data does not show significant enough correlation between the strength of the Byakugan of parents and children, and large enough discrepancy in the difference between the strength of the Byakugan of children of mixed and pure heritage to support such practices. I now leave the floor open for discussion and debate from the Council."

Hinata stepped back and lowered her head in a gesture of respect as the Council stared at her in silence. Her skin crawled and nausea threatened to overwhelm her under the weight of all their stares, but she fought down the urge and kept her head high.

Finally, one of the Councilmen broke the silence. "How can you be sure your findings are not tainted by your own personal opinions and experiences in this matter?"

Hinata gritted her teeth; she'd been expecting questions of this sort and had prepared for them, but that didn't mean she was going to like answering them. "While I cannot disagree that my suggestions based upon the findings of my research align with my own personal opinions, I can say that I have examined all data in an objective manner to form my conclusion, and I challenge any who sit here today in opposition to consider the same data I have with as much of an open mind and come to a different conclusion."

The lesser members of the council tittered at this bold statement, but Hinata held firm despite the quaking in her soul. The Lord Hyuuga banged his gavel against his desk to quiet the murmurs.

"Order! The Council will now take a forty minute recess to study at length the materials Miss Hinata has provided for us. This session is temporarily adjourned."

At the sound of the gavel a second time, the entire room exploded into a chaos of rumbling voices and shuffling papers as people read over the graphs and data spreadsheets that Hinata had prepared and conversed with their neighbors over points they thought were interesting. Glad of the reprieve from the Council's soul-searching eyes, Hinata felt the tension drain from her body and leave in its place a wobbly sensation as she used the last of her energy to walk over to the chair she had been provided next to the Lord Hyuuga's desk, as befitted her station as Second Heir in Training to the Position.

Her grandfather turned to her as she sat down, observing her legs start to shake under her table as they were no longer required to perform the task of holding her weight upright. "That was very well done, Hinata."

Hinata beamed under the praise, though it was partially hidden by her flush and the curtain of hair that she let slide past her cheeks as she tilted her head forward. "Th-thank you, Grandfather."

Much had changed in the scant intervening months between Neji's disappearance and now, the most noticeable being the almost complete disappearance of Hinata's stutter. Unlike before when it was strongest in public situations, now it hardly ever had any effect on her when she spoke prepared words in front of a large crowd, and it only came out when she was speaking to someone on a personal level.

If her grandfather noticed the way the first word tripped against the edge of her teeth and came out a little stilted, he didn't give any sign. "You're welcome. I hope to see all your hard work come to fruition."

"Do you think it stands a chance of passing?" Hinata whispered, almost afraid to ask.

Her grandfather looked out and across the courtroom, where people were discussing the report, some with angry looks on their faces, some with contemplative. "I don't know. Perhaps. That all depends on how well you argue after the recess and the alternative you suggest."

Some small measure of Hinata's stomach died at his words. "Wh-what?"

"The alternative." He turned back to regard her. "Most of the people in this Council do not think like you, Hinata; they are old, creatures of habit, and do not like the idea of change much. Even I fall into this category. If they are to be convinced of a change, they must know exactly what is to happen instead of the current policy in order to weigh if the change is worth the expenditure of effort."

Alternatives… there would have to be so many of them to cover the many aspects of the current policies she was trying to get changed, and she hadn't even considered them yet! Why, when he had agreed to mentor her through this project at a distance, did her grandfather see fit to mention this know, a half hour before she would have to argue against the better part of the Council for her proposed plan? Why wouldn't he have given her more warning?

Then she caught sight of the calculating spark in his eyes, and Hinata understood. He was testing her, seeing how well she had either thought this out beforehand or could think on her feet now. It was his right, after all; she was still only an Heir in Training, not fully his Second Heir yet. It was only at the completion of a rigorous training protocol and at his approval that she could be officially pronounced his Heir. This was just one more in a long list of obstacles he had thrown at her to see if she could overcome them, and would continue to until she either failed or met his expectations.

She nodded curtly. "I have a plan for alternative policies, I had just not expected to use it this soon. If you will excuse me, I must make some notes for myself to use in our next debate."

Hinata could tell that she had said the right thing when her grandfather's eyes twinkled and he nodded back to her. "Permission granted. Convince me."

* * *

Sasuke walked up the drive to the door of the Hokage, nervously tugging at the scarf he wore wrapped around his neck. He'd been out of contact with Sakura these past few weeks, and he knew she would be irritated because of it when she saw him. With no small degree of trepidation, he knocked on the door.

A disapproving frown on her face, Sakura yanked open the door. "I hope you're proud of yourself. This is the third time this week-!"

Her mouth dropped open in surprise as she recognized him, cutting off her words. Sasuke pulled the scarf away from his mouth and flashed her an apologetic smile.

"Hello, Sakura."

It looked like Sakura was having a hard time remembering how her lungs worked.

"S-Sasuke?"

Sasuke opened his mouth to say something, but before a sound could escape his lips, a small ball of hyperactive energy dressed up in golden hair and blue eyes cannonballed into his middle and knocked him down into a muddy puddle taking up space on the pavement in front of the door. The wet chill of the puddle soaked up through the seat of his pants, but Sasuke couldn't bring himself to care. The little phantom's face face buried into Sasuke's shirt before he could make out his expression, and he thought he heard a sniffle as fingers clutched desperately at the fabric of his collar.

"Naruto!" Sasuke admonished the ghost. "Let me up! The ground's wet!"

A sniffle emanated from the region of his shirt as Naruto finally consented to lift his head. "I missed you, Sasuke. Why you wait so long to come back and see me?"

Sasuke had no words to answer the ghost's question, so he just ran his fingers through Naruto's pale hair, making it stand on end.

"Here, let me help you up."

Sasuke looked up to see Sakura offering him a hand.

"Thanks," he said, his gloved hand lingering in hers for perhaps a second longer than necessary before he coughed and withdrew it. "Sorry."

"Why didn't you answer my calls?" Sakura demanded as she placed her hands on her hips, fire sparking out of her eyes. "I was worried about you!"

"Ah, about that…" Sasuke shuffled his feet in embarrassment. "I told my parents my phone was broken so they wouldn't try to contact me, and I shut it off so I wouldn't accidentally use it and make them suspicious. They were against me coming, see… Sorry if you were trying to contact me."

"You could have at least sent an email or something to tell us you were coming!" her eyes suddenly widened in suspicion. "Why are you here, anyway? Shouldn't you be at school?"

Sasuke looked down at the threshold, to embarrassed to meet her gaze. "All my finals are over," he mumbled, completely ignoring her first question. "...Is Kakashi here?"

His question was answered by the set of footsteps leading from the kitchen. "Sakura? What's taking so lo- Oh, for God's sake, Sakura, why are you standing there with the door open? Don't you know how much it costs me to heat this place?"

Without a word, Sakura stepped back from the door, exposing Sasuke to Kakashi's line of sight. The owner of the Inn froze when he recognized the boy, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion.

"Sasuke…?"

"Hey, Kakashi," Sasuke said with an apologetic smile, his hands tucked deep into his pockets and his back hunched at an awkward angle. "I'm here to cash in that favor."

Kakashi looked at him for several seconds, then shook his head. "Alright, come inside."

Sasuke was glad that he at least didn't ask many questions until after he had made it through the door into the relative warmth of the lobby. Sakura led the way to the kitchen, where she went about making him a cup of tea while Kakashi sat him down at the table and then sat down opposite him, steepling his hands and giving Sasuke a hard look over the top of them.

"Alright, Sasuke. What's the nature of that favor you want?"

Before he could answer, Sasuke found Naruto climbing into his lap to rest curled there like a small puppy. A cup of tea was slammed down in front of Sasuke, and he looked up to thank Sakura before the words shriveled on his tongue at her hard look. She plopped down next to him and steepled her hands in the same way as Kakashi.

"Yes, Sasuke, tell us why you've been ignoring me this long and now see fit to come ask for a favor?"

"Sakura," Kakashi started, but Sasuke raised his hand to stop him.

"No, Kakashi, it's alright. I deserve it. I just… my family has been going through some really rough situations, and I needed a break from it so I was wondering if you might be able to give me a job for the summer?"

Naruto's head instantly shot up, his interest in the conversation restored. "Are you going to stay the whole summer again, Sasuke? Please say you are!"

Kakashi raised his eyebrows. "Like what kind of situations?"

Sasuke hesitated. "Have I ever told you about my brother?"

At the shake of both of their heads, Sasuke told them the entire story from when Itachi had attacked him to seeing him in New York City those several months ago, leaving out little except for things that involved family secrets forbidden to leak to people outside the family. As he spoke, both of their eyebrows crept further and further up their foreheads in incredulation until Kakashi shook his head in disbelief.

"That's crazy! I almost can't believe it! I wouldn't be able to believe it if I didn't know you."

"And there's more," Sasuke continued grimly. "My partner Neji- do you remember him?" When they nodded that they did, he continued. "Well, anyways, Neji fan away from his family last August and they couldn't find him until late last month, but by then it was too late. He had already changed his last name, which meant they had no legal jurisdiction over him according to their family law. Because he was my partner, everyone else in my family is looking at me and my father for what we did wrong, and my brother's failure is being called into question as well. I just… wanted to get out of it for a while."

"If you want to stay here for a while, I'd be more than welcome to have you," Kakashi said warmly. "Sakura can help you figure out where you're going to be staying."

Naruto perked up. "You mean you'll be staying?"

"It appears so, he murmured quietly enough that only the phantom would be able to hear.

"Wait a minute. What do you mean 'Sakura can help you figure out where you're going to be staying'?" Sakura snapped angrily.

"Exactly what it sounded like," Kakashi said calmly in the face of Sakura's anger. "Please help Sasuke find a place to stay for the summer. Doesn't Choji have a spare room now that his older brother has gone to the service? Maybe he could rent it out."

"But I still don't see why I have to do it-!"

"Because I said so, that's why." Kakashi stood up from the table. "I have things to do. Take care of it for me, won't you, Sakura?"

And with that, he strode out of the room, leaving Sasuke behind with his angry companion. With what he hoped was a winning smile he turned to her and said, "So, Sakura-"

He didn't get a chance to finish. Sakura grabbed his now empty tea mug and brought it to the kitchen sink, which was already filled with soapy dishwater that had to be cold with how they had been sitting there talking. She dunked it in the water and sloshed it out before rinsing it off and placing it on a nearby rack to dry. After she set it down, her shoulders hunched, but she refused to turn back to face him, and Sasuke was too afraid to break the silence to try and speak to her again.

Eventually she straightened up again. "Sasuke?"

Swallowing with no small measure of difficulty, Sasuke asked, "Yes, Sakura?"

"I'm still mad at you, but…" When she turned around, there was a smile on her face. "It's good to have you back."

Sasuke smiled at her in return, holding the wriggling ball of spectral energy in his lap a little tighter. "It's good to be back."


End file.
